


Savage Garden

by flowerless



Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Apocalypse
Genre: Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, slownburn, sub!Michael, young!Michael
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2019-10-15 23:44:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17538599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowerless/pseuds/flowerless
Summary: Young Michael Langdon—crybaby Satan and cherubic terror—has been incidentally slaughtering the help left and right, much to Constance Langdon’s dismay. In a last-ditch effort to wash her hands of the growing patron saint of violence and angst, Constance hires a new nanny who has no clue she is about to be a founding blueprint for the apocalypse.





	1. Introduction

_“In spite of all the refinements of civilization that conspired to make art—beauty was savage. It was as dangerous and lawless as the earth had been eons before man had one single coherent thought in his head or wrote codes of conduct on tablets of clay. Beauty was a Savage Garden.”_  
  
-Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

 

The girl’s name is unimportant. It has always been, to her. It never resonated, never ceased to make her feel anything other than sick. She was always running from herself with a frantic desperation in one way or another, and trauma was always only a step or two behind. _Annoying._ That name, she decides, is not relevant to anyone anymore, most of all herself. 

She throws away masks as flippantly as discarded candy wrappers, identity after identity fashioned to mold her into the background. She dissolves just before she is a solid, tangible thing to be remembered or revered or needed, again and again and again. Never an object of permanence. She can’t afford to be. She thinks if she can somehow ignore the clumsy, tragic, torment-ridden experiences that forged her grotesque existence then she can be brand new and unscathed. 

Maybe, if others like her and need her, rely on her, think of her as something good, then she can be something good by proxy. Don’t have to be a monster if she is someone else, she figures. It isn’t that she truly believes the faulty delusion of that logic, more so that pushing everything back into the confines of her mind is the only way she can continue living with some small semblance—some trembling illusion—of sanity. Her existence is subdued and as a whole dissociated because it is the only way she can go on. 

_Whatever_ , she decides with dismissive finality, _who cares_. That’s the central perk of only existing on the fringe of things—there’s no one there to care, so she doesn’t have to either. She rests easier this way, easier in the back of that SUV than any roof she has ever resided under. 

Flickering light flies past her periphery and encompass her, orb-like, strobing, exhaust and ceaseless rumbling of engine threatening to break her concentration. Loud trap music thrums by. Her foot is lead over the gas pedal. I-5 is immeasurably overwhelming for a girl that is used to much... smaller pastures, even in the dead of night. Even after many, many hours spent on the interstate. Californian drivers are unforgiving and nothing short of terrifying, her teeth clench as she keeps her eyes peeled for the exit. 

_Fuck the freeway._

_Never again_ , she muses, feeling for the melted milkshake in her cup holder, refusing to remove her nearly unblinking gaze from all of the signs soaring past her. She can’t afford to miss another exit and start over, her gas tank is low and her last $5 was spent on the congealing Dairy Queen from hours earlier. The milkshake was a delicious luxury to her, having eaten very little outside of stolen dollar store food in the last three months. 

The nausea that rose from her belly to cradle her throat made her have to constantly remind herself to breath. A car crash would not be an unreasonable fear in such conditions. An accident could be fatal. If it were to befall her, she hopes, let it be fatal, considering that her worn SUV and all its packed contents are legitimately all that she has. 

In the whole of her life, several months shy of her 20th birthday, she hadn’t known she would sink this low, at least not this early on. How could she? State to state, city to city, her exhaustion was resolving to suicidal ideation. She left home over 4 years ago, and this is where she is, really, fucking really? Stealing food from gas stations, washing her hair using water bottles, sponge bathing under the covers in her trunk? Once such a magnificent thing, reduced to curling up in her parka in a sleeping bag under blue tarp. At least her trunk is spacious, she scoffs. At least she can stretch out fully under the cover of it and sleep almost—dare she say—comfortably.

It certainly beats the two plastic garden chairs pulled up to face each other that she had slept on in the damp, peeling skeleton of a house in the bowels of the midwest. There were holes decorating the walls as liberally as family photos, condensation and paint chips flecking the ceiling. Graffiti and children’s crayon drawings lined nearly every square inch of wall. Her skin itches at the thought of all the bites that littered her limbs. She winces slightly and pushes the memory from her mind, refusing to become a victim to the thought of what had happened there. Refusing to remember the others. If she does, she will almost certainly break. Her eyes will fill up with tears and she will not be able to see where she is meaning to go and she will skitter into another vehicle and her life will, once again, be nothing but a death trap of annoyance and chaos. Inconvenience after inconvenience. The constant drama was exhausting. And, frankly, fucking irritating.

Her body snaps to attention as she spots her exit, quickly veering into the right lane and gliding up the ramp to take her closer to her destination. At least when on the brink of almost hysterical desperation the gentle hum of her power always keeps her just barely scraping by. Just barely scraping by, but nothing more. Never anything more. 

She has learned to abandon the naivety of hope. Optimism is foolish. She is constantly residing in her daydreams, but the distinct gulf between her fantasies and the cold, cruel harshness of her reality never intersects. Promise and security are luxuries forever far from her grasp, psychological contusions have shaped her into the wispy shadow of a girl rather than the authentic thing, aged her psyche years and years beyond her constitution’s capacity. There wasn’t any fun in it. She feels weathered, tired, bored. Better yet that she’s alone, she knows she’d hardly make a good companion to anyone. 

_Hey, I’m practically a ghost and I have a ball and chain of deep-seated issues and PTSD, nice to meet you. Oh, did I mention if I’m threatened or touched the wrong way you will likely be eviscerated instantly?_  
Yeah, hard pass. She’ll just do her own thing, or whatever.

The freeway is taking her to Constance Langdon. 

The woman is a stranger—as is everyone she ever encounters these days—and a last resort at that. The winter was approaching in the midwest and she could no longer afford to sleep in her car. The house that she thought would be her shelter throughout the harsh cold ended up being a disaster of embarrassing proportions, and this was her last-ditch attempt at survival before she threw in the fucking towel and just careened over a canyon, or something. 

She knew the west coast would be warmer. She had never been, but the state had the highest rate of homelessness, and she figured she could blend in seamlessly given the fast living and eccentricity within. 

The craigslist post she had concocted from her phone (using the WiFi at a McDonald’s, no less) advertised herself as a full-time professional nanny/caregiver looking for long term employment, preferring shifts of at least 12 hours. It said she is dedicated, empathetic, reliable, and most of all trustworthy. She is incredibly patient and has experience with children and adults with autism and ADHD, an invaluable addition to any family in need of loyal assistance. It does not say that she is homeless, hopeless, and essentially afraid. 

It takes Constance four days to contact her. The woman’s southern drawl is stern and her remorseless, snide enunciation is almost lulling. The girl recognizes immediately that she means business. She is not fucking around. Her gift, her unwavering intuition, can feel the desperation that laces the woman’s prideful tone. Constance is at the end of her rope with her grandson, Michael, she explains. She takes constant pauses from the receiver to drag off of a cigarette, her exhales are shaky with exasperation, frustration. 

“How old are you,” Constance had asked, “why, you hardly sound old enough to buy a bottle of bourbon.” 

“19.” 

There was a long pause and the girl had swallowed, knowing the tension was likely from her age. It was hard for her to find good nanny work. Women never wanted to hire her, guarding their husbands with a defensiveness that made her sigh—as if she would ever want to touch a hair on their rapidly receding hairlines. She refused to entertain inquires from single fathers, well aware of the workings of the male brain. The few times in her youth when she was too trusting to pick up on nuance taught her very quickly that there was always negative intention behind the carefully crafted stories of middle-aged men to reel her in. The leers always made her stomach churn. 

Although she could hardly afford to cherry pick, her defenses against predation were far too keen and sharp—the last thing she needed was to brutally maim some harmless, loser pervert who only ended up jerking off into her panties. If life is about choosing your battles, she would rather avoid anything that would set off catastrophic disaster. Most anything she did seemed to set off catastrophic disaster. 

“Well,” Constance had swallowed, finally cutting through the tense silence, “Your resume boasts of maturity that I am...forced... to trust in my circumstances.” Pause. Drag. Exhale. 

”Thankfully, I don’t have the added stress of a husband to worry over, so any possible trickery you may have on your end is at waste in my household.” 

The woman’s cackle almost sounded incredulous, “my grandson is a very, very special boy. A handful. From what you’ve told me, you are quite used to handfuls. Although he is not yet quite spoiled, he has his... particularities. He’s very sensitive. Could you handle a growing boy and his tantrums?” 

The girl had said yes. Easily. Why wouldn’t she, after dealing with her fair share of sadistic, hollow, petulant children that wealth had already curdled cruel and sour? 

“He’s a big boy, can you handle that as well?” “Yes,” she had said without a second thought, “I’ve also worked with many handicapped adults. I doubt size would be an issue.” 

Constance had laughed in a manner she could not quite place.

The sharp-tongued southern woman had given her the address, offered her the spare bedroom, and laid out her meticulous rules within the first hour of their phone interview. There wasn’t a stone left unturned. She was desperate and that was an advantage—she would have the chance to prove herself, that she was good at what she did despite appearances. There were no parties to slink off to, no boyfriends to sneak through the window—she practically had nothing. Besides, this was her last chance to doing things the honest way. 

She was out of money, and a job could at least ensure her means of survival without the threat of having to resort to using her gift. Her _gift_ , more of a curse really, usually ended up punishing her three-fold after using it as a crutch. Without using it, without letting its exhilarating sting hum through her fingertips and brandish her surroundings with misfortune, she could maybe survive longer. At least if the job didn’t work out, she could find another one and sleep in her car without the threat of hypothermia and snow. Disaster couldn’t follow if she refused to bow to the temptation of her otherworldly devices now, could it? She would live like everybody else, no matter how disadvantageous. 

The directions were easy enough to follow now that she was off the freeway and able to slow down, concentrate. The amount of cars she passed had slowed to a trickle, and she felt comfortable enough turning her music back up and singing along absentmindedly. The sun would not peek up from underfoot for another three hours or so, she thinks, although she isn’t quite sure how it works on this coast. 

She had already researched the neighborhood and perused google maps thoroughly, prepared to adapt to the area. Many of the houses on either side of the street were unoccupied, and this didn’t alarm her given the recession or area in question. One in particular caught her eye, and she had decided she would precariously park on the curb between it and its neighbor to wash her hair and take a nap wrapped in her tarp, preparation for her meeting at the home across the street.

Ah-ha. There’s the manor, overgrown with grass, a chafing ghost to the splendor it must’ve been at one point. Its gate droops, almost threatens to uproot itself, exhausted under its own weight and desertion. She idles slowly and turns off her lights. If there are streetlamps they are not on and she is grateful, crawling over to her passengers side to stick her head out the door and rinse with water.

She rinses, lathers, rinses using a jug she routinely fills up at rest stops. Goes over the possibilities in her head, rehearsing her behavior and mannerisms to cater to Constance’s perceived traditional and conservative demeanor, trying to become molded around the alias she had given over the phone, her second alias this year, her sixth altogether. So marks yet another era that she must throw herself away to make room for a new self.

Julien would be her new name. It wasn’t significant really. It was chosen at random, the first name of the vocalist for a band she had been listening to on shuffle. But Julian was now who she would be—to Constance, to little Michael, to herself. To the state of California. 

_Julien_ wraps herself up in her sleeping bag, makes sure her doors are locked (double click), and sets the alarm on her phone for her introduction to Constance Langdon and her grandson across the street. She stirs slightly, adjusts the towel tucked around her wet hair. At least she‘s warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lack of Michael in the first chapter, I’d like to put at least a little substance in the plot. He’ll be in the next one, patience! I debated back and forth in my head to try Y/N format but I just couldn’t do it. Julien is, however, still a conduit of sorts for the reader.  
> I’ve never written a fic before and I’ve honestly only started reading them recently so please spare me. I’m easily embarrassed and unsure of myself but I suppose I’m using this as a prompt, my first exercise at writing. 
> 
> I hope you can forgive my long absence. I’ve always had a very specific ending in mind for this that I very much want to see to completion, but ultimately life has kept me from being able to put in the effort I would like. Thank you so much to everyone who has expressed encouragement, receiving positive reinforcement even in the wake of my hiatus was such a sweet thing. We will finish this.


	2. Chapter 2

_“My future,_  
_a shimmering threat._  
_How fast I knifed_  
_open a realm_  
_and it angled_  
_into me.”_  
  
-Hanae Jonas, ‘Ritual for a Door’

  


Being prey under the floodlight of Constance Langdon’s unforgiving stare was an experience that even Julien found unnerving. The rigid blonde woman had patted her (outdated) updo gently while allowing her eyes to slowly travel up and down the girl with a frozen grimace, brow raised. Her gaze was measured, stern, cold. She hovered on Julien, studying her features, eyes lingering on the thick scar that marred the left side of her face. The girl did not care. She was used to this. Constance clicked her tongue. “I suppose this will do,” she had wistfully mumbled, dropping the arm that was resting on the doorway and moving to let Julien inside. She paused, infinitely disapproving eyes darting to her feet, “Take off those dirty sneakers please.”

When they had seated at her kitchen table for tea, Julien had noted how everything in the house was frozen in time, much like Constance. Her upsweep, her pearls, her dress, her home—she was a woman of Virginian dignity, as she said, and this meant that she wanted things done just so. She wondered how strict she was with her grandson, if he too were taught on these dying principles. 

They spoke here and there of values, of morality, of Constance’s past. She would often pause and sniff, gazing at Julien expectedly, raise a brow here or there at her inflections, a constant pillar of judgement. 

_Michael is a sweet boy, really,_ she had told her. _Sweet but troubled, in need of more stimulation and companionship._ She twirled one of the pearls in her ears between sentences. 

Love can only go so far, Constance had clucked, of course she didn’t have all the time to give the boy every bit of the attention he had required. Besides, she couldn’t really take him to the grocery store without him being overly-stimulated by the crowds, practically shutting down in on himself for heavens sake, there was a sense of delicacy in these things, you know.

She went carefully over various quirks of Michael’s temper on each of her manicured fingers and the girl noted the basics— _one_ , he wants to spend far too much time playing video games or watching television. Standard.

 _Two_ , he reacts very negatively to strangers and feels threatened by the presence of men. She has a hard time bringing her consorts home, she explains. She frets over her last two ‘boyfriends’ and Julien tries not to stare out the window with glassy eyes. Constance was visibly excited over the prospect of being able to stay elsewhere overnight again. 

_Three_ , he is easily scared by public stimuli and becomes overwhelmed by groups of people, and will curl up with his hands over his ears, often crying out and making a scene, which is why he needs to stay at home. She insists she will run all the errands while Julian stays with Michael. 

_Four_ , he has a lot of curiosity about anything and everything. He will break whatever he wants just to get a look at what is inside. He cares little about what he has destroyed. She warns against Julien leaving out any personal items at all, especially laundry.

And _five_ , he is violent when he does not get his way. She must be very careful of how she speaks to him. He is sensitive. Constance hopes she can be a companion, play with him, keep his vigorous tantrums at bay. Maybe be like an older sister, give him some more stability when she can’t be home, he is a growing boy now, after all.

A handful of nannies didn’t last, she warned. Maybe the girl being younger can help, she’ll give it a try, she really doesn’t have a choice in the matter when she’s exhausted all other options, she laments, defeat lacing her exuberant ranting.

She would refer to Julien and previous nannies as the help as casually as flicking the embers of her cigarette into the ashtray. Julien didn’t mind this, she was used to this and worse. In her experiences working mostly for sheltered and spoiled wealthy women, they had practically treated employees subhuman. In fact, she found herself admiring Constance and her harsh, willful nature, her unashamed scrutiny. This is a woman that has never let a man hurt her, she thought. 

Constance had lit yet another cigarette, assuring that Michael would awaken soon as they made idle chit chat. The girl complimented a half-finished painting on an easel in the corner of the room. She knew Constance was only feigning interest when she mentioned that she draws as well, but it filled the silence.

Julian responded indifferently to the odd remark here and there, _Do you always wear slacks and sneakers?, When was the last time you went to a beautician for that unmanageable hair of yours?_ , and her favorite, _19 is an age of blossoming into womanhood, haven’t you thought about maybe polishing up so you can find a suitor, rather than waste your youth cleaning up someone else’s messes? Certainly you could do better than whatever this is._  
She wasn’t wrong.

She interrogated Julien about her past, her family, where she came from. The girl had given her short answers, fitting the clean, average, unsuspect narrative she wanted to fit into, praying she wouldn’t ask for her ID and if she did, that she would buy her excuse that she lost it and would get a new one when she can afford it.

To her relief, Constance didn’t ask to see her ID. She was mostly interested in learning about how close her family is, if she has siblings, how long she has been in town. She doesn’t seem to mind that Julien is from states away with no family, and if it bothered her at all she didn’t show it.

She gave Julian a quick tour of the house, stopping to quietly peek into a cracked door in the hall. When they walked past the back windows, she noticed nearly every square foot of the backyard was planted with an overabundance of bushes, roses withering slightly for winter.  
Constance held the front door open for her while she brought in some of her things: a trash bag of clothes, a duffel of miscellaneous toiletries and personal items, her small sketch book. 

Now, Julien sits folded in on herself, legs tightly crossed, stirring the spoon in her tea that has now grown cold. Constance takes a pursed sip and places her cup on the saucer with a clink that stirs the silence. She narrows her eyes at Julien.

“Now I would hate to just disregard my manners, dear, but I hope you can find it in that wonton little heart to forgive me for addressing”—she pauses, eyes trailing her face once more—“the elephant in the room.”

Julien nods. She knows where this is going.

“Just an unfortunate scrape from a car accident,” she lies, “People stare all the time, it’s fine.”

“What an unsightly shame on such pretty yellow skin,” Constance’s cigarette is dwindling and she eyes it thoughtfully, “I suppose it makes sense then, why such a pretty young girl would waste all of her time hiding away in jobs meant for matronly old bats and immigrants.”

 _Immigrants,_ she had really said. Julien swallows slowly. She decides not to point out Constance’s ignorance or that she herself could just as easily be the child of immigrants as well. She’s southern, no doubt.

Again, nothing she hasn’t dealt with before. A job is a job and it isn’t meant to be catered to your beliefs or sensibilities.  
She opts to nod solemnly.

Constance’s gaze fixes on something behind her and causes her to turn around to face the source of curiosity.  
Her breath catches in her throat at the stranger towering behind her against the kitchen door frame, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Before she can ask any of the questions racing to reach her tongue first, Constance quickly stands and walks towards him.

“Julien, this is my grandson, Michael.”

She puts her hand on his back and urges him forward, pulling up the plaid pajama pants that were falling low on his hipbones.

“Michael, this is our new helper, Julien. She’s taking place of that lazy halfwit Mrs. Nayeli, and she’ll be staying with us now. Say hello to her.”

He looks at her shyly from under his lashes, eyes still swollen with sleep, rust-blonde waves of hair curling haphazardly all over his face. 

“Hi,” he says softly, stifling a yawn using the hem of his shirt. She glances. His torso is long. She averts her gaze to his grandmother, heart thumping with confusion.

If Constance notices the girl’s apparent alarm, mouth agape, unable to form the questions pouring into her mind, she won’t acknowledge it. She leads the boy to the kitchen and pulls out a chair for him to sit, helping him scoot under the table, sits a bowl and spoon on the counter, turns to Julien with a performative smile.

“Now, would you be a dear and pour Michael some cereal from the cabinet? There’s a little bit of milk left in the fridge.”

Julien obliges, speechless. Constance grins from ear to ear and it doesn’t reach her eyes.

“How lovely,” she drawls, leaning in close to Julien’s ear, “You hear me now: be good to my boy. That’s all I ask. You certainly will not enjoy the consequences otherwise.”

Julien nods slowly.

The saccharine smile returns to the older woman’s face, “wonderful.”

The first couple weeks of Julien’s stay at the Langdon household were spent under Constance’s scrutinous management. It didn’t take much to warrant any number of her small quips and harsh criticisms, but by the end of week two she was lingering less and leaving the house for much longer durations, apparently finding the girl’s competency satisfactory enough, to her relief. 

Michael—  
Well, Michael was an anomaly. Julien couldn’t quite place the feelings he evoked, but decided to chalk it up to how deceitful his appearance was to his uncoordinated, childlike nature. 

He was painfully shy in the beginning. He’d find it difficult to make eye contact, often staring at her feet while shuffling his own, twisting the hem of his shirt around his fingers, speaking so softly and with such uncertainty that she would often lean into him with a pricked ear. She didn’t read into it too much, assuming somewhere in the back of her mind that he was likely a young adult on the spectrum. 

The first week and a half was spent establishing her presence—her permanence—in his day to day life. She found herself putting in extra effort to earn those sweet, timid smiles that would break across the symmetry of his cherubic face whenever she was generous with her praise and attentions.

She baked him cookies. She knocked on his door before entering to see if he wanted to go on a walk with her or help her dry the dishes. She asked him questions about his games, sat at the foot of his bed and cheered him on as he smashed the buttons of the controller.

He began coming out of his room more. He’d linger in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot, asking her for permission before taking slow, fidgeting strides to her side. He started looking her in the eye, beaming, chin raised slightly, grinning, laughing, no longer staring at her shoelaces. It had to be a crime to look that pretty when you smiled. 

It did not take long at all for him to be glued to her hip, mirroring her motions—picking up on her movements mere seconds after she contemplating acting on them. He was always willing and eager. She’d stretch her legs to stand and grab the remote and he’d be sitting it in her lap. She’d go to switch the laundry and he’d already be waiting for her with the hamper. Constance would watch with her lips drawn into a tight line, jaw tense, holding back whatever ugly bile was itching to spew from her tongue before turning her attentions elsewhere. 

Julien was stunned (and stumped) by how well he adapted, how quickly he processed and perceived even minute nuance. It began to dawn on her that she couldn’t possibly believe that he was just mentally handicapped—rather he was not used to stimulation, to attention, to outside intervention. He was stunted, somehow. She had seen it before in neglected children, and it broke her heart into pieces. But those children were also between the ages of four and eight. 

She wondered why it took so long for Michael to receive any encouragement, certainly he couldn’t possibly be any younger than 17 at the very least—her age, maybe even 20 she guessed—why wasn’t he allowed to leave the house? Why wasn’t Constance trying?

She had seen him pout a few times, glower, sulk even, but where was this monster that she had so vividly described? Sure, she could hear the strict woman chide him from beyond her closed bedroom door occasionally in the middle of the night. She’d hear him yelp, stomp his feet, sometimes cry out. It didn’t appear different from any other child, really.

It was the beginning of the third week when she experienced one of his tantrums firsthand. Constance was out—no, she didn’t know where, nor did she really care. The break from her nagging and unforgiving stare was warmly welcomed. Things were peaceful when it was just Julien and Michael. 

But Constance was out far later than usual—the first all-nighter of many—and it was a Friday evening. On Friday nights, Constance would make him grilled cheese (absolutely loathing the ‘greasy plastic’ the entire time) and then draw him a bubble bath to humor him with rubber ducks and toy sail boats.

“Where’s Grama!” Michael had wailed, striding around the house in circles with clenched fists.

Julien’s attempts at placating him were fruitless—no, her grilled cheese couldn’t be as good as Gramas, no way. Grama had to be the one to do it, Julien wouldn’t know how. Grama did it right and Julien would do it wrong. 

She followed him into his room and he turned to face her, snot and tears dripping freely. He curled his fists and all the windows and doors slammed shut. He stomped his foot and all at once everything on the shelf behind her flew out and crashed to the floor, rogue books hitting her in the back with significant force as she fell to her knees, wincing. His eyes grew wide, still slick with fat tears, and he quickly dropped on all fours and crawled to her side with profuse apologies. 

Yet again she was speechless. 

“What the fuck?” was the only thing she could force up from her throat as the beautiful brat clinging to her waist and tugging on her collar hurled a string of regretful sorries and sobs into her neck. 

She remembered, albeit vaguely, fuzzy around the edges, the very first time she got so upset that things just... moved on their own. The day her mother cried out in fear, beat her, locked her in the spare room for however long she couldn’t remember. If she concentrates, she remembers awful, ugly things that she was too young to understand at the time, things that now fit together like a puzzle, although it makes her temples pound. 

She made grilled cheese and they ate in silence. She drew him a bubble bath loaded with his ducks and his sailboats.She picked up each and every fallen object in his bedroom without question or contest.

When he called her name, timid and soft like when she first arrived, laced with regret and apology in the only way he knew to express, she rolled her sleeves up and leaned over the rim to wash his hair. The lump in her throat grew leaden when he melted under her fingertips with gentle contented sighs. Adorable, sweet, manic, incorrigible fucking...oversized rugrat. 

She counteracted her own feelings of embarrassment and inner conflict—‘what the fuck’ she had chanted in the back of her head at least three dozen times, mind short-circuiting with shame, teeth gritted, _whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuckiswrongwithme_ —by scooping up bubbles into her palms and blowing them at his face. His small, glimmering smile was semi-precious atonement that she had been hoping for. That flash of teeth was enough for her to forgive his sins. The slick white of his smile, the straight, proportionately carved mouth of a growing predator, carnivorous glint of the prettiest pink mouth, lips plump like renaissance or something. 

He had already began fading from his outburst, slanted lids heavier with the weight of exhaustion, puffy and sleepy and defeated, burying his face in her shoulder, hair wetting her shirt.

”Please don’t leave me, Miss Julien, I’m so sorry.” His sobs were a litany at her throat.

Her fingers found their way to his scalp again, clinging to the nape of his neck, free hand making circles at his spine.

“I know you are, Matilda. I’m not going anywhere.”

He had tilted his head in confusion but was too lost in his own fretful worry to ask what she meant, nodding cautiously.

“Your grandma never watched Matilda with you?”

He shook his head.

“Fine then, if you’re extra good for me we can rent it tomorrow and watch it before bed.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I write this in the notes app of my phone. Please be forgiving.


	3. Chapter 3

_“Muse, wherever you_  
_might go_  
_I go._  
_I follow your radiant trail_  
_across the long night.”_  
  
-Roberto Bolaño, ‘Muse’  


######  __

____

  


“Miss Julien,” Michael’s bare feet pad across the hardwood floor, “Miss Julian you’re supposed to finish reading the book to me tonight!”

Miss Julien has been reading to Michael every night before bed for weeks now, he can’t even count them on each of his fingers anymore. He knows all of his numbers, but he likes the way Miss Julien tickles him when he _forgets._

He ‘forgets’ a lot because he knows she likes to teach him, and he likes to be taught. It wouldn’t be fun anymore without her telling him what a good boy he is. If he stops ‘forgetting,’ she wouldn’t need to tell him how good he is anymore. He wants her to tell him how good he is forever. 

The kitchen is empty.  
The living room is empty.  
Grama’s room is empty—but it’s almost always empty now. 

Grama has been mad at Michael since he got Big, he knows. He heard Grama telling Miss Julien that she has a boy friend now and don’t wait up for her, so she must stay wherever he is all the time, he guesses. Miss Julien told her she drinks too much and he had covered his ears and cried when they started yelling at each other. She said that when Grama starts yelling he has to promise to put his hands over his ears and sing ‘you are my sunshine’ until the yelling stops, so he does, because they had pinky swore and she kissed their interlocked fingers and said that meant she’d know if he broke their promise. He would never break one of their promises. 

When the yelling stopped, Miss Julien tiptoed in his room and put her head under his blanket where he was curled up tight and told him it would be okay, that she just drank too much and fell asleep so he can come out now. She didn’t even miss their book chapter that night. 

Michael doesn’t mind as long as he has her, maybe. She’s much nicer than Grama, and she doesn’t stink like smoke or drinks medicine and yells. She tucks Michael into his bed, kisses him on the forehead, isn’t afraid of him even though he’s Big. Grama stopped doing those things after he grew, but he didn’t mean to grow. He just went to bed one night and woke up with his body twisting in the dark, but he couldn’t move. He laid there crying because his legs and arms hurt, everything hurt so bad.He tried yelling for Gramma but his body was stuck, stretching, popping, cracking. He was so afraid, sobbing, sputtering. Grama didn’t hear him. He didn’t remember what happened afterwards. He just knows that it was his fault that Grama doesn’t love him anymore. 

But Miss Julian forgives him for growing. 

Yeah, maybe he _does_ pretend to forget a lot of things so she will help him, but not to be bad. He does it because he doesn’t want her to think he doesn’t need her anymore.  
Because he does need her.

No, she doesn’t hate him for being Big like Grama does. She holds his hand when they cross the street. She doesn’t scream or get scared when Michael accidentally _makes things happen._ One time she even found him taking a nap in her bed, wrapped up in her blankets while she had gone to the grocery store, wearing her lip stuff and one of her big pajama shirts from the dirty hamper without asking, and she didn’t even get him in trouble. Didn’t tell Grama. 

The first time he had put on Grama’s red lip stuff, she had yelled at him. She was really angry. She said boys have no business doing those naughty things. He didn’t mean to break the crayon in the tube, he said sorry, he thought it was so pretty, but Grama was still very mad. He just wanted to match together.

Miss Julien is still in her bedroom. He tries the handle. The door is locked.

“Miss Julien are you still sick?”

Silence. He presses his nose to the door.

“Miss Julien, you know I can open it.”

It was a momentary breach in his ‘forgetting,’ his being good, but she hasn’t left her room all day long. The sun is going down. This is the longest he’s been away from her in all the months she’s now been by his side.  
He hates it.

He had left her a present.  
He had left her a present, and she doesn’t like it, and now she doesn’t like him. 

“Miss Julien,” his tone is lower now, a warning. He tries to stop it but he can’t. He doesn’t want her to leave him. He wants to make her feel better. 

“Miss Julien I’m opening the door.”

The lock clicks and the door now stands ajar, untouched. Her bedroom is dark, the curtains shut tight. The bathroom door is closed, light pouring from the cracks, shower running. Low sobs are hiccuping softly, stifled by the water.

He peeks at her sketchbook on the desk, rifles through the pages. His favorite pages are the ones that have little bits of him. Sometimes he thinks he sees his eyes, or his hands, the curl of his hair, maybe a figure in graphite of him sleeping hidden among dozens of other small sketches. It was like playing I-Spy, finding all the bits and pieces of his image among flowers and crows and faces and objects and things. It lets him know she won’t ever forget.

He smiles at a page folded closed, a new penciling of him sitting on the porch cradling his mug of hot chocolate under his chin. Last week she had sat across from him on the porch swing, etching away on the paper quietly. She wouldn’t let him look over her shoulder.

He wants to go in there with her but last time she told him that they weren’t allowed to take baths together, it was wrong. She wouldn’t even say yes every time he pouted, so that means if he tried to ‘forget’ it would still be bad, so he’ll be good.

Michael slides to the ground and sits with his back against the bathroom door, eyes shut tight. He likes the sound of Miss Julien crying. He doesn’t know why, but he does, and the sound of it sinks into his whole body, like music. He inhales sharply. Steam, jasmine, Miss Julien and her little sniffles. It almost lulls him to sleep.

The tap cuts off and Michael’s eyes fly open. He listens to her dry herself off with the towel, wring her hair out over the tub like she always does, blow her nose forcefully.  
She pauses.

“Michael?”

He presses the side of his face to the door.

“I still feel really sick, that’s all. Please let me rest a little longer.”

“Miss Julien, I’m hungry.”

“You haven’t ate yet?”

“Nuh-uh.”

He really hasn’t eaten yet, not once all day. He actually is hungry, it’s not a fib. He could make himself food, he really does know how to now. He can even reach everything just fine, he doesn’t need to pull up a chair to sneak Oreos from the cabinet like he used to. But he doesn’t want to without Miss Julien, so he ‘forgets.’

He sits with her silent shuffling for a couple of minutes, waiting. The door swings open and he looks up at her, his eyes wide, robe-wrapped frame above him bringing with it a billow of steam and all her sweet smells. This is his Miss Julien. He wraps his arms around her sides, resting his head on her belly. He could stay at her feet with his body cleaved around her knees forever.

She avoids his gaze with swollen eyes. He wonders how long she must have been crying. She didn’t like his present this time. She hates him now. She hates him and wants to leave and never come back, that must be why she’s upset. 

She wiggles her legs loose from his grip.

“Michael, I need to change now. You can wait for me in the kitchen.”

He knows he should, but he wants her to smile. He wants her to love him again. He pretends to be a cat, like he does sometimes to make her laugh, circling her legs, rubbing his cheek against her calf. He looks up into her eyes, searching.

“Meow.”

It’s enough. A small smile creeps on her solemn face. He thinks it almost reaches her eyes, at least a little, but he’s not sure. Something is still very wrong.

She reaches down and pets him under his chin, gifting him with a tiny laugh. He purrs, leaning into her fingers.

“Good kitty. Go wait in the kitchen.”

He hugs her knees one last time, looks up at her to say with his eyes _please, please don’t leave me, please come back, I need you to come back._ As he leaves the room, she chokes back a heaving sob with the palm of her hand. And then she collects herself, she gets dressed, she comes back.

He sits obediently, elbows off the table like Grama taught him. He remembers that Miss Julien sits her elbows on the table when Grama isn’t looking, sticks her tongue out at him. He decides he’ll still keep his elbows off the table, Miss Julien never said he was allowed to do it too. Maybe she’ll see how good he’s been and won’t be so mad at him.

Finally, she sits across from him. He waits. She doesn’t speak. He clears his throat, a little afraid, unsure of himself.

“Is this ‘cus of my present?”

She waits a minute to answer, searching for her voice. Her eyes are hallowed, red electric from a fit of violent hysterics she had done her very best to hide for the past however many hours. He must notice, she decides. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been at her door with the fear of god in his eyes as he kissed her kneecaps and pleaded wordlessly for her to come out of the self-appointed dungeon she has not left since yesterday.

“Yes, Michael. It’s because of your,” she winces, barely able to say the word, “present.”

His lip trembles. She’s hurt his feelings. She doesn’t want to hurt him, doesn’t have the energy to deal with it, but she cannot continue living with this as though it’s okay.

The first was alarming, the squirrel. She had screamed in disgust. When Constance had awoken from her booze-hibernation, Julien came to her in near hysterics. The trite old hag had cackled like the wicked witch of the west, lighting a cigarette and motioning for her to sit down. 

“I told you,” she had said, still laughing, and then she told her everything. What she thought was everything, at least.  
_Bitch._

She will not break. She threads her fingers together on the tabletop, looking Michael dead in the eyes. How does she know he really feels remorse? How can she know if this is really her beautiful, misunderstood little Cupid? 

A part of her wonders if she’s being played like a violin.  
Another part of her doesn’t even care. 

“I used to accidentally hurt people when I was angry too,” her throat cracks, voice barely able to waver above a whisper, “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know how to control it. Men would touch me, and suddenly their hands would be burning through like acid. A girl at school would taunt me, she would fall off the jungle gym and bust her mouth open, or choke on her chewing gum until she turned blue, or a pencil would lodge itself into her hand.” 

His head tilts, eyes brimmed with tears. She doesn’t have the power to see if they are the tears of crocodiles or not, and maybe it’s better off that she doesn’t.

“My mother thought I was of evil. She said everything I did was because I was possessed by Satan. She taught me this for years. She did very cruel, hurtful things to me for so long. I was too young to understand. I thought I was a monster,” she shifts in her chair, “And it took me a long time to realize that I wasn’t. That I was just a little girl. That I didn’t know how to control what was inside of me.”

She waits a beat, lets him process it. He is still listening.

“It’s been hard, but I was able to push all those painful things my mother did to me way, way back here,” she taps her temple, “and I have done my best to make sure that nobody gets hurt because of me anymore. I’ve never wanted to hurt anyone.” She stops and thinks, smirks. “Well... maybe men. I think a lot of men deserve a world of hurt.” She shakes her head. “My point, Michael, is that I come from a place of understanding. I want to help you.”

She stands from her chair, begins walking to his side.

“But never in my life, in all that pain and torment,” she stands over him, eyes locked, “have I wanted to torture or hurt an innocent creature like that.”

That’s it. The dam breaks. Tears stream down his face at record speed. His body wracks with tremor.

“I’m s-sorry,” he wails, hiding his head in his hands, “I just wanted to give you things, I wanted you to know. I—“

“—you wanted me to know what, Michael? You couldn’t stop with the squirrels, or the neighbor’s rabbit? Even after I asked you to stop, you _fucking bring me Lucky_?”

He brought her Lucky, and then he was so raucously unaware of the horror of it that just minutes before he had meowed at her heels, not even realizing how inappropriate it was. He had wanted to make her happy, so innocent-minded in the unspeakable things he did that he couldn’t even remember the correlation.

Lucky was a cat that they saw wandering around the neighborhood occasionally. The thought of how she found him, slain, neatly pinned for her to discover as she stumbled half asleep into the kitchen made her nearly wretch. Again. God knows she had to clean out the sink with Comet after she vomited the contents of her stomach until she thought she’d choke on her intestine.

A cat. A sweet, harmless cat, one they had fed a couple of times before it scampered off to gather charity from other neighbors. Michael had pet Lucky before. Plenty of times.  
Her breath catches.

“Michael, is this because Lucky bit me last weekend?”

His shaking shoulders rock his head into his hands, cries stuttering into his palms. He doesn’t answer, he can’t. He’s all snot and salt and shame. She almost lowers to her knees to reach into his cloud of despair but stops herself. No, she will stay above him. The coddling has gone on far too long. If he really wants this as much as he claims, if he really wants to be good, then he has to prove it.

Standing over him like the sun, she folds her arms, waiting. His sobs are seizing in his throat and he sniffs loudly, willing himself with all his might to hush the stuttering that loudly falls from his mouth.

“I d-don’t,” he wipes his nose in his shirt, keeps his face inside his collar, “I don’t know!”

He tried to control his voice but it comes out as a wail. Look, he thinks, he’s even yelling at her. She definitely won’t forgive him now. He’s pathetic. He’s a _monster_.

Miss Julien swallows, teeth clenched, fists squeezing around her arms.

“Clean him up.”

Michael removes himself from his hiding place inside his t shirt, stares up at her in awe.

“But—“

“—I said clean up the fucking cat, Michael.”

His lip trembles violently. She says _fuck_ sometimes even though she’s not supposed to, just like Grama, but she only says it at him like that when she is mad. His jaw contracts. He scowls.

“It bit you. You bled a little.”

She raises her arms incredulously, brings them back down to her hips with a smack, eyes rolling wide up the ceiling, shaking her head, scoffing, unfuckingbelievable.

“ _You_ ’ve bit me too, Michael. Have I ever _cut you open_ and _nailed you to the doorway_?”

He shakes his head, guilt weighing down on his eyelids, defeated gaze falling to her bare feet. Her toes are painted deep red. His are too. She told him he has to wear his socks around Grama because if she sees, they’ll both be in big trouble. If Miss Julien leaves him, he can’t sit and watch her paint her nails. She won’t read to him. She won’t drag him out of bed by his feet while he pretends to sleep, body wracking with suppressed laughter. It’ll be him and Grama, and Grama doesn’t like him anymore. He doesn’t want another nanny—again—he wants to keep Miss Julien.  
He _will_ keep Miss Julien. 

His tremors start again, but this time he isn’t crying. He looks up at her from under his lashes with his jaw clenched hard enough to chip a tooth. The cutlery and dishes in the cabinets start to shake. The pots and pans are clattering. The lights start to flicker. She takes a step back.

“Breathe, Michael.”

His curls bounce. The rage is quaking through his whole body, he is practically gnawing on his mandible now.

“Come back, Michael.” She just barely contains the fear in her voice.

Unable to take it anymore, drained of all fight, exhausted, conquered, she kneels before him and takes his hands in hers, uncurling his fingers from his taught knuckles, bringing his palms to her cheeks before he decides to hurl her across the floor in a single sweep of his hand, or something to that degree.

The lights stop flashing.  
The cups and plates and silverware slow to a tremble and then still.  
The pots and pans are silent.  
The knives in the drawer do not fly out this time.  
Good.  
This is progress.

Michael drips sickly sweet as honey if he gets his way, and he knows he has it. He knows he has her again, and that is enough to slice through the heat that had been strobing through his circuits in angry flashes of hot light only moments before. 

He hiccups, and she rises to bring his face to her belly. Her fingers tuck his hair behind his ears, stroking his scalp to calm him, her thumb traveling over the raised engraving of skin behind his right lobe. She had seen it before while washing his hair. She had seen it plenty when he’d fall asleep on the couch with his face in her lap. She had seen it countless times in their close proximity, but she had never felt it under her fingers until now.  
It burned. 

Julien hasn’t ever really considered the existence of gods and devils after she grew up and found out the boogeyman her mother had beaten into her didn’t really exist. Her mother was schizophrenic—believed that angels whispered things to her at night—and poor little Julien never stood a chance. Her mother thought she could beat the devil out of her, indoctrinating the frightened child with shame and unshakeable self-loathing that took her years to unravel herself from. The number six thrice did not stir any sort of otherworldly alarm in her. _Still_.  
Constance’s warnings and taunts were tumbling round her head. 

She thinks of the slain rodents nailed in the kitchen doorway like garlands of tinsel.  
They were her presents, he said. He gives them to her because he loves her so much.

She thinks of the time they were crossing the street and a man had yelled expletives at her from his car, how Michael had froze in place, squeezing her hand, glowering, and just as quickly the car drove into traffic and was near flattened by a veering semi truck. He swore he didn’t do that. She should have known better. Her of all people should’ve known. 

She thinks of how he had been getting so upset that she won’t let him sleep in her bedroom unless it is storming outside. Now it has been thundering and lightning on their block right before bed almost every night for _weeks_. 

She thinks of how hot his temperature is, how his eyes seem to bend the will of everything he decides to gaze upon, how he seems to radiate something dark and sweet and forbidden and poisonous. 

She is now glued into symbiosis with an apex predator. 

There is an acute, guilty understanding now that Constance was not the villain she had perceived her to be. The old woman had been telling the truth the entire time. The way she had shook with despair, 100 yard stare as she poured herself scotch and recounted how the boy whom she showered in unconditional love had nearly crushed her windpipe under his hands.

“He doesn’t need me now,” she croaked, eyes on the table between them, too prideful to allow her tears to spill, “and that is why I beg you to take him from me because I just cannot do it anymore.”

The look of indignance she gave Julien was met with sympathy—she knew now. Why she never wanted to come home. Why she drowned herself in drunken lament. Why she would look down at Michael clinging to Julien with nothing but pure, unadulterated disgust.

Her Michael was just a pestilence, a parasite disguised in very compelling packaging. The son of the devil would be something desirable and magnetic, after all. People love being destroyed by things as long as they are beautiful. 

Michael is growing too fast. Light tufts of hair have began appearing under his belly button. It seems as though he is shifting right under her nose. His eyes bore into her differently, knowing, suddenly his face seems older. He retains every insignificant detail of what she tells him, what he computes and processes. His memory is not just photographic, it is seemingly alphabetized and organized into compartments. He tests her, looks at her from his periphery carefully, gauging how she reacts to this and that and this. She swears he is beginning to know exactly what he is doing.

His light brushes, his touches, his accidental bumps into her seem less and less like flukes. It appears as though he does it just to study how she perceives his actions, taking everything in, experimenting. When she accepts them and ignores them, his ever-opportunistic need to be as close to her as possible responds with demanding more contact. The moment she allows something, he does it constantly.

His reverence has began morphing into lingering, inconceivable stares. There is a glint there that wasn’t before, and in all the intensity she cannot decide if it’s a leer or something different entirely. The realization that he is becoming better at masking his expressions—becoming more and more unreadable—dawns on her and is very unsettling in the pit of her stomach.

She doesn’t think Constance was lying, the ravings of a washed up lonely old woman, anymore. This fills her with immeasurable shame. She’s embarrassed for being naive enough to paint such a strong woman into an antogonist, allowing herself to be deceived by the appearance of a boy. To reduce the years of sharp intuition she has accrued into nothing just because of a pretty face perpetually wet with tears—like some common silly girl who fancies herself a martyr, who pines to be damsel at the hands of something that will swallow her whole. A naive girl who doesn’t _know_ the things that Julien knows would consider it romantic. How stupid. Stupid girl. 

Truthfully, she kind of likes it. Underneath all of the fear and exhaustion, she likes being the object of Michael Langdon’s worship. She would bury every rodent corpse Michael threw at her feet to keep him looking up at her like she was the only one who existed. She’d never acknowledge it out loud and she’s done a very good job playing the part of begrudging caretaker, but being needed by Michael is the only thing she has. It’s fucked up, she isn’t lacking in awareness. Perhaps it’s some ingrained need to protect. An instinctive part of her biology that the predator just underneath his skin latches on to like baby to breast.

She doesn’t fucking know but it beats having to move state every couple of months, and besides, if something is going to tear her to pieces, let it be something that looks like the Tiffany stained-glass window of Saint Uriel that filtered light through the pews of her childhood church. She used to look up at the window in middle school, day dreaming, thinking how beautiful he was.

Perhaps she thought if she gave all her attentions to Michael, read him stories, taught him his letters and numbers, he would be able to release his fists from around the violence within that was always threatening to emerge on the surface.

But her attention was no longer enough. It would never be enough for him now.

He required more and more, slowly ebbing away at her personal boundaries as though if he could burrow his way into her body and make home between her lungs he would. His grip becomes tighter. His need for space has evaporated. He wants to spend every waking moment in her shadow, so he does. Growing wearier, she doesn’t know how to tell him _no_ anymore. If she tells him no, the whole neighborhood will lose power again. The trees outside will cause another wildfire for miles. No rodent or stray will live to see next week.

His grip around her waist is iron-tight. His chest heaves into her stomach. The microwave clock reads 8:47. Constance likely won’t come home tonight. She peels herself away from his arms. He sniffs, wiping away the lingering mist of tears on the backs of his hands.

“Clean up the cat. Get rid of it. I’ll make dinner now.”

She reaches into the fridge for a package of drumsticks, nearly dropping them on the floor when he mumbles—just audible enough for her to hear him—“Thank you mama.”


	4. Chapter 4

_“…but blushes well became him; like the bloom of rosy apples hanging in the sun, or painted ivory, or when the moon glows red beneath her pallor and the gongs resound in vain to rescue her eclipse.”_  
  
-Ovid, ‘Metamorphoses’

  


The mop slapped against the tile floor and Michael startled from the little nook he had made at the kitchen table with his head buried in his arms.

“Finally,” Miss Julien scoffs, signaling him to lift his feet so she can swirl cleaner under the chair.

Apparently it was draining being the flesh-instrument of evil, taking naps at the table when he’s supposed to be reading his lessons. It’s a hard knock life, how does he _possibly_ find the time to balance the scales of his free time, you know between torturing little woodland creatures and softly grinding himself against her in his sleep half the night. 

Constance Langdon had really calculated everything so conveniently in her own favor. Now she has passed the burning torch (just barely) unscathed, handing the responsibility of being the caretaker for the conduit of Satan right to Julien. Perhaps the psychological damage accumulated is more than enough to justify her underhanded ways. She’s one hell of a woman, Julien will give her that. 

Michael sighs.

“I’ve read the whole thing.”

He’s too sleepy to play dumb today. Miss Julien doesn’t pay any attention to him on Sundays when she cleans the house, he isn’t going to bother trying. Countless times has he done his very best to be the sweetest, the cutest, the most perfect, and every single tactic was in vain on Sunday. She’s too busy with her music in her ears, swaying slightly and making figure eights with sponges, brooms, dust rags, mops.

Michael likes her music, mostly because of how it makes her move. Whether she tells him it’s reggaeton, or 80s goth pop, or Grama’s records or something, she grabs his hands and spins him around, her arms and legs dance like they’re weightless and she pulls him with her, he can feel her laugh in his belly.

She doesn’t realize that every time she stops to huff and turn the volume back up, that he’s the one that’s been lowering it every few minutes with the swipe of an index finger. She pauses, reaching into her pocket to adjust it again, visibly frustrated. He smirks. She turns to face him, he quickly drops an indifferent gaze to the book. 

Michael is eternally grateful to be learning from Miss Julien. She understands everything so fast. And now, he thinks he might almost be faster. 

It’s been months since Michael had left his last gift for Miss Julien. He doesn’t want to make her that upset again. She made him clean up with bleach, he hates the smell. He was so mad at her, but only for a minute. It was okay though, he got back at her by making her have a nightmare that night, watching her with his hands under his chin, reveling in the way she squirmed and tossed around in distress. 

The temptation to dip inside of her head is always so strong, although he does his very best to keep out. Sometimes he can’t help himself. When she had bad dreams, she would burrow herself into his shoulder blades with her hands tight around his stomach. Once or twice her knee would hitch over his thigh. These are things she wouldn’t do when she was awake, when she wasn’t vulnerable.

When she was vulnerable she showed him how much she really needed him, like he needed her. But when she had her wits all she ever did was hide herself from him and put away all the things he liked to see and feel and play with.  
_Boring_.

As if she knew he could reach in and sense those things, she would try to keep up a wall from the moment she said good morning until she said goodnight. The barrier has been much harder to break through since he gave her his last blood offering. Yes, he could stop his need to open things up for a little while to make her happy. Besides, now he was fixated on a new outlet. For the time being, he liked trying to open _her_ up much more. 

He flicks his wrist and the volume of her music goes mute. She twirls on the balls of her feet to face him, he purposely lowers his head to his book too slow.

She points her index finger at him accusatorially, “You!”

Turning to look behind him, he widens his eyes to face her, the picture of divine innocence. He points at himself, mouths, “Me?”

She drops the mop against the counter and it begins to slide to the ground. Michael freezes it before it can clatter to the floor, willing it back against the cabinet.

“Thanks Matilda.”

“You’re welcome, Miss Honey.”

It worked. Her feet stop in front of his chair and she looks down on him with faux-rigidness. A smile is pulling at the corners of his mouth. That’s one point for Michael. 

“You think you’re funny, huh?” She folds her arms.

“Nuh-uh.”

She steps behind his chair, fingers trailing along the line of his shoulders, “You want to play a game then, is that it?”

He allows the slightest nod of his head to betray him, he can’t help himself. He wanted her attention, now he has it.

“I’ll show you funny.”

Her hands brush against the nape of his neck. He shakes his head. She tests under his arms. He bites back a snort, shakes his head a second time. Fingers dart down his spine and attack his sides and he stifles the giggle rising from his throat with all his might.

Narrowing her eyes, she raises a brow. “What, so now you’re too good to laugh for me?”

He lifts his chin up at her and offers a wide, smug smile. She tests his sides again, more forcefully. The snort catches in his mouth but refuses to part from his lips, he’s stubborn. The proud grin he offers up to her is enough.  
It works.  
He knows he’s about to get what he wants.

In one quick swoop her hands are up his shirt and she’s tickling his stomach all the way up to his ribs, under his arms and back, over and over until he squirms his body away from her, erupting with laughter. His wails bellow between her chants, her Hail Marys of _Ah-ha! I’ve got him! I’ve conquered the foul demon that just will not let me bump it while I spitshine these wretched floors!_

Just before she can retract her hands he holds them in place with his own through the fabric of his shirt, presses her palms to his bare chest so that she can feel his ragged breathing. All is quiet save the sound of his heaving chest. When she attempts to pull her hands back, he grips them tighter. 

“Michael,” her tone is stern, her eyes won’t meet his, “let go.”

Everything hinges on this moment. This might be his only opportunity for weeks and weeks. He swallows, trying to collect the bravery he had just moments ago as it begins to flee and leave timidness in its wake.

“Make me,” he tilts his head, leans real close, connects his forehead to the crook of her neck, “mama.”

There it was again. Julien nearly chokes on her tongue. It isn’t that she hasn’t been called that before. It wasn’t uncommon, in the past—way back when she actually interacted with people other than baby Satan and his stone cold bitch of a nana—for coworkers or whatever to call her some variation of mom. She’s been teased plenty for her domineering tendencies. But it’s the way Michael says it. It’s full of need and reverence and it makes her feel tainted and dirty and ashamed. It’s calculated. He knows it gets under her skin. It just isn’t right. It hits a nerve that she does not like and embarrassment blooms in her belly. It’s fucked up. Whatever this is, it’s fucked up. 

This time, he lets her pull away and step back, smoothing down his shirt for him before collecting herself.

“I told you that you shouldn’t call me that.”

His face falls, his confidence with it. He finds a spot in the corner of the room to focus on.

“But Miss Julien just isn’t right,” he chooses his words slow, careful, “it doesn’t sound right when I say it. Your name isn’t Julien inside my head.”

There’s silence between them.  
He finds her eyes again, gauges for her reaction.

“When I think about you, you’re just my mama.”

His ears are hot. He begins to conceive that the words that are coming out of his mouth don’t sound the way he wants them to, can’t express what he feels. They even sound silly, stupid. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. He thought that maybe she would be happy. He’s unable to fathom the implications. Implications don’t matter to Michael, after all. All he knows is that she is safe and strong and he _trusts_ her, the ground she walks is always right and true and he will follow her path without question. Her shadow is the warmest place he has ever resided, and oh no, he will not leave, not if all the people in the world come to pry him away.

What other way to show their connection, their bond than by honoring her as mother? He has never experienced it with any else. He’s never had one. He needs her approval, he needs her to acknowledge that she loves him like blood. There’s an instinctive, unspoken knowing, a sense of security, of concreteness. He doesn’t know the words for it, he only knows how it feels and that if anything hurt her he’d make sure it would be reduced to smoking ember.

She can’t look at anything besides her feet. Now the guilt is immeasurable—Michael can sense that she’s an imposter, and has resorted to calling her his fucking _mommy_ because of all of his psychic confusion. Heat rises to her face and pricks all over her skin because now she can’t stop thinking about all the times he’s slowly rutted into her in the middle of the night, entirely unaware and snoring between soft grunts. She says he’s only allowed to be the little spoon now. She’s too embarrassed to say anything about it, and she can’t even begin to think about having any sort of _talk_ with him without imploding.

 _Mama,_ he said. Oh _my god._  
What kind of Freudian wet dream—  
Constance’s heels click deliberately to a halt at the doorway. In one hand she clutches her purse, a pack of half-unwrapped Virginia slims in the other.

Her icy stare bores into Julien as she hikes the purse onto her shoulder and tears the wrapper off the pack and shoves it into the wastebasket, jaw flexing its hinges. Her mouth twitches. She turns to Michael and offers a performative smile, tension electrifying the room.

“It’s poker night, sweetheart, and Grama’s going to show those overfed, drooping goblins from that glorified bingo hall how a real woman conducts herself with a winning hand.”

She strokes the side of his face and he freezes, the gesture painfully robotic. Adjusting the collar of his shirt with her stiff fingers, barely able to keep the forced grin in its place, she pats his head awkwardly and strides towards the living room.

With her back turned to Michael, she slows to pause at Julien’s shoulder, daggers behind her pupils. “Trim the roses— _Mama_ ,” she whispers with venom.

The front door closes so quietly that it leaves behind more impact than if she had slammed it.

Constance is a loose end. As long as she resides in the presence of Michael, she will drink and self-medicate and fuck her way through the county into a barely sentient stupor, and there isn’t any living thing that can blame her. 

As long as she resides in the presence of Michael, he will forever be reminded of all the pain he’s caused and inflicted. He is reminded of the unwanted, abandoned, obscene disappointment that he is. His only glimmer of hope is anchored at Miss Julien’s feet.

He crosses his arms over his chest and watches Julien pick the mop back up. She doesn’t even put in her earbuds. The other half of the floor is finished in silence.

In a bid to break through the oppressive despair wisping around the room, she begins to wash her hands in the kitchen sink, face twisted in mock disgust, “my fingers smell like your armpits.”

He puts his head back down on the table.

It isn’t necessary for her to order him to dump the dirty water outside, but he waits obediently with the bucket in his hands for her permission to do so. She nods, he’s out the back door. When he returns she isn’t there, as he predicted.

He checks her room. Empty. The dryer door slams shut in the basement so he’s there before his feet can take him. He evaporates and reassembles in the blink of his eyes, something he only just now discovered he has the ability to do, incidentally.

Miss Julien is loading clothes into the washer with her back facing him. He’s about to tiptoe forward and pounce, scare her to her core, already ready to show off this pleasant new addition to his growing harem of abilities. He pauses his pursuit, suddenly leaden, as she peels off her shirt and throws it in the washer.

His mind is blank. A shirt from the hamper replaces the discarded article. He waits and her (his) sweatpants come down next, a victory that would otherwise have him reeling with triumph and unabashed, screaming gratitude, but all his circuits short.

Long, thick, jagged scars seem to scatter what he can see of her legs from top to bottom like some kind of mutilation tic tac toe. He doesn’t even have the time to stare, sate his curiosity to the fact that she’s wearing that red underwear that he likes so much, because he can see one, long, serpentine scar disappearing up the inside of her thighs and around her hip. Her legs are swallowed up by another pair of pajama pants that aren’t soaked with mop water. 

His immediate reaction is anger. It’s a traitorous secret she has been keeping from him. Did somebody hurt her so bad, or does that mean Miss Julien likes to be opened up? There’s a slew of questions flying through his head, ones he knows he can’t ask without giving away the cardinal sin he just committed by peeping on her.  
How has he never noticed before? 

As she begins to spin around to pick up the hamper his heart nearly palpitates and when he blinks his eyes he’s in his bedroom, under the blanket, deliriously light headed, breathing so heavily he swears she could hear it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Garbage- No.1 Crush_


	5. Chapter 5

_“I want to fill you like a cup,_  
_cut my lips on your_  
          _chalice-teeth._  
                  _Look at me,_  
          _I am ruined by love.”_  


-Karese Burrows, ‘Ransack’

  


Clumps of dark blonde hair fall into the sink. The sound of the shears snipping a halo round his head is nearly enough to lull Michael to sleep. He’s always sleepy lately, staying up most of the night, restless and winding himself every which way with twitches and snaps. That damned dark thing blotting out his nerve endings and churning his blood into molasses keeps him up until sunrise sometimes.  
He thinks he’s growing again. 

Miss Julien is working the scissors through his hair with deft hands and quick precision, eyes narrowed with concentration. She stops every couple minutes to lean back and survey her work.  
  
“I wish I had hair as cute as yours.”  
It’s a sincere compliment.  
  
He beams.  
  
“It is is pretty cute, isn’t it?” 

Rolling her eyes and placing the shears on the sink, she ruffles through his curls one last time and blows the hair off of his face.  
  
“It grows so fast. I feel like I’m hacking hair out of your eyes every couple of days.” She hands him back his shirt. “Clean it up, please.”  
  
He nods.  
He’d probably do anything Miss Julien says.

He asks her if she ever goes to get her hair done like Grama and she shakes her head, mumbling something about it being impossible to look in a mirror for that long. His head tilts and he lightly traces his thumb over the thick scar carved down her brow and through her eyelid, splitting her lid halved, tapering off and halting under her cheek. He’d been touching it a lot, recently. He’d never gave it much attention before. 

Scars are different from the way they appear in films and television. It is vastly different to be the one wearing them in reality from how it is to see them—like badges or notches—on, say, a videogame character. There isn’t anything cool or interesting about walking around with something marring your face, let alone your whole body. In real life, it’s embarrassing. It attracts the kind of attention that nobody actually wants, that few can handle. It changes how you posture yourself, how you interact with others. 

A sizable scar on the face isn’t something you can just hide under a sweatshirt, a pair of pants. It’s like a neon sign that invites others to gawk at you like a circus sideshow freak. It makes her want nothing more than to crawl out of her skin for good. How many times has she heard how pretty she would be without it? How many times has she been asked, immediately, why it’s there? As if living with the damn thing in the mirror every fucking day wasn’t enough. 

She’s had it long enough for it to have sunk into her skin. It went from a red ribboned slice to a purple scabbed trunk to pink raised keloid, to eventually collapsing within itself. A branding that is whitened, hollowed, almost has a glimmer to it, skin knitted in small knots that you can only see if you are close enough. In the slit where it splits down her right eyelids a sparse patch of lashes won’t grow, like the parted space through the middle of her brow. The skin around it is taught. She couldn’t hide it, short of putting her head in a paper bag. Tempting, really.  
She often wonders how different her life would be without it.  
This would definitely not be her profession. 

Julien realizes that Michael is the only person that has never directly asked her about the scar. In the whole of the all these months he’s spent twined around her, the only acknowledgement he ever gave it was a nuzzle, the press of the side of his face to hers, a trace of a finger, any other number of casual displays of closeness in their constant proximity. A wordless, selfless affection so pure she doesn’t understand how he could possibly be the insidious bearer of world’s end as Constance had claimed. 

How is it that some supposed vessel of total evil has overlooked the mutilated rip down her face, but near every other person on the street has pointed, whispered, or stared, men often even making snide remarks? Surely the rest of the world couldn’t be more cruel than Satan’s lovechild. She looks like a torn piece of fucking paper, after all.  
She supposes he himself has a scar, a branding, of his own. 

Just yesterday at the gas station while Michael was using the bathroom a group of middle aged men had cackled wildly when one had said _Look, look at that, man, somebody really fucked her up._  
And yet, the supposed child of Lucifer hadn’t even seemed to notice it in all that time. Then again, there’s a lot he doesn’t notice.  
At that same gas station, Michael nearly fell over a wet floor sign. The Devil’s son, although often unknowingly giving off the illusion of moving so feline and lithe, lacks in the coordination department. He often teeters on his long limbs like a newborn doe still sliding in its own fluids.  
Constance did allude to the fact that he has grown much faster than your average boy, but when he had stared at the signs on the bathroom doors with ill-disguised confusion she wondered if he had been chained to his booster-chair his whole childhood. 

The fan is set on high. She gets Michael into his bed and settles the spine of their current book into her palms. He burrows himself into his place against her shoulder, waiting.  
Miss Julien doesn’t know this, but he has already read the whole thing.  
He usually finishes the books they read together within the first few nights they start them, he can’t resist, but he would never dare to tell her. She still thinks he struggles over words and he likes it that way, likes being so close with his chin hooked over her shoulder to stare at the pages, pretending to follow as she quietly reads into his ear, his head cradled by her neck. He knows what’s about to happen, what’s to come, how it ends, but he doesn’t show it. He plays his part, asks questions he already knows the answer to, all just to hear her and make her stay right by his side longer.

Michael, in the essence of his corruption and innocence, is contradictory.  
He truly does not understand that what he is doing is manipulative. The word ‘manipulative’ isn’t even yet a pillar to his being.  
No, he thinks at times that maybe his ‘forgetting’ is bad, but the guilt is swallowed up by a much greater need to be praised by Miss Julien. He needs her, after all. Where would she go, what would she do if she thought he didn’t need her? He won’t risk it.

She finishes the chapter, tells him goodnight, makes him promise he’ll sleep in his own bed until morning. Pinky swear.  
There’s a glass of water on his nightstand just in case. 

“I really do love you so much miss Julien,” the statement is matter of fact, flat, voice giving no hint of expectation as he pulls her hair behind her ear, a gesture stolen from all the times she had done it while tucking him in to bed in the beginning—long before she found out he had been flung from a flaming hellmouth and onto earth to debauch and destroy.  
His eyes glitter with an admiration that holds nothing ulterior.

“I love you too, Michael.” Her eyes are unreadable, far away. She brushes her lips absentmindedly to his temple, smelling his hair, something so second-nature to her that she usually doesn’t even notice she’s doing it. 

He shakes his head, voice cemented with finality, “I love you the most.”

Their routine is pretty standard from day to day now.  
Michael will wake long before Julien—kicked out to exile in his own bed when she can manage the feat—and wait on the foot of her mattress, often falling right back asleep. 

She wakes him, they brush their teeth, she makes his breakfast and goes off to do her girl’s magic, comes back out so pretty at times that he thinks her an angel.  
They watch Michael’s cartoons, she tries to tear away from his clinging long enough to start on chores. Lessons last til after lunch time, sometimes she’ll take him on field trips to the grocery store or to walk around and get ice cream. 

He’ll help her finish chores—well, he mostly waits for her to tell him what to do. He will sit on the dryer eating from a bag of chips and talk while she folds the laundry or carefully irons Grama’s dresses.  
He asks her questions, lots of questions, all the time, about everything, trusting her answers as sacred law, no other person could possibly give him everything that he needs the way that she can.  
She is the only one who doesn’t leave.

He spends the whole of the day looking forward to night, when they read their books and then he can slip himself into Julien’s dreams and feel her erratic breath close to his neck. When she sleeps, he flexes his abilities, testing the currents that emit from the tips of his fingers, satisfaction dripping from his contented hums as he reaches in closer and closer into that place in her he desperately wants permission to enter. 

It isn’t that he couldn’t get in there. He could if he wanted to, just like that.  
And he does want to!  
But he wants her to tell him to do it, he wants her to see that he is _so unbelievably good_ , so obedient and willful that he can resist even the most painful of temptations to take what he wants without her say so. His entire world orbits around her approval, her fingers caressing the dips behind his ears saying _good boy, good boy_. 

It is why he stopped offering up the blood of small things, after all.  
Because she wanted him to. 

Some days he is manic, high on everything, showering her in affection and begging for her praise, doing anything to earn a smile or a touch.  
Others he is brooding, frustrated, so melancholy he is ready to melt in the floorboards; his tantrums always creating a mess she’s obligated to clean up. This perpetuates the cycle—once he regains conscious autonomy and realizes she had to pick up after his disgusting proverbial catastrophe, he’s careening into hysteria again, he’s on his knees at her feet begging for penance, _he’s so sorry he’s so so sorry_.

Those are things he doesn’t do on purpose. He simply becomes so engulfed in the ugly thing inside that pulls his strings—this demented puppeteer twirling him like a marionette—that he doesn’t realize the consequences until it’s too late. He comes down from his grotesque tirades and everything around him is destroyed. He hurts everything within his atmosphere, and it comes so easily and naturally to him that he doesn’t even fully understand why it’s wrong.  
This, he knows, makes him a monster.  
And there are other things that make him bad, too. Things he knows he’s doing, that he does with purpose.

When he would fall to the floor crying, something he’s managed to refrain from doing now that he’s getting bigger again, Miss Julien would try and pull him up and he liked it so much that he’d often throw himself down on purpose just to feel her so close.  
Or when she tells him to go to his own bed, he shuts his eyes tight and wills her to see lightning splintering through the sky and thunder roaring near her windows, even though it makes him so dizzy he thinks he’ll be sick.  
While he does like to sleep by her side for comfort, he is mostly so afraid that he’ll grow again and he’ll be all alone, like the very first time, when he tried to call out for Grama but nobody could hear him. The crackling and popping of his sockets never really did leave his memory, often makes him wince at the thought. The way everything snapped and twisted and stretched. What if it happens again and Miss Julien isn’t there to help him? What if he grows even bigger and she doesn’t even know who he is, thinks it a stranger in his bed, screams and runs away and never comes back?  
All he does is to be close to her.  
It’s simply that keeping her close is the easiest way to ensure she does not leave.

His favorite days are the ones when she has very little to do.  
It was uncomfortable at first, but now Miss Julien is so used to being under his constant surveillance that she lets him watch her comb her hair, paint her nails, take care of her skin, put on makeup. He always waits with bated breath for when she’ll ask if he wants some chapstick, his nails filed, toes varnished, honeysuckle lotion perfuming his body. She even lets him do face masks with her before bed. 

One night—a little winedrunk and unusually generous with the mischief she hides underneath her controlled, responsible mask—she asked if she could do his makeup, and that was easily one of the best nights ever, so far, apart from Grama coming home since he had to wipe all of the careful handiwork off.  
He liked it best when they matched.  
Miss Julien was pretty, so pretty that it made him feel small, and he wanted to be pretty like that too. 

Tonight, Grama is out with one of her innumerable suitors—Miss Julien calls them her ‘walking airbnbs’—so he sits with his legs spread out, foot in his little caretaker’s lap while she swabs the polish from his toes on the sofa. Their legs fit like scissors.  
He’s tasked with picking out a different color. A movie he hasn’t been paying any attention to serves as white noise, his fingers hovering over the bottles of polish. He likes the deep red best, but he’s picked that one at least seven times already. 

He grows less and less naive, at least in the way of getting what he wants.  
Everything has been moving way too slowly, too barren of opportunity, and he’s getting really impatient.  
He has a plan. 

He wiggles his toes to catch her attention. “Miss Julien, can you pick my color today?”  
  
Her eyes flit up from her work.  
“What for?”  
  
“I wanna wear the one you think is prettiest.”  
  
She picks out a glossy burgundy only a hair different from the one he always wears, the color of wilting roses, but he’s happy she thinks it’s the best one for him. The name of the color is _Ravage Me Red_. When she’s finished drying his top coat he goes in for the kill, taking the matte taupe bottle she always uses on herself from between her fingers.  
  
“Can I try to do yours now?”  
  
There’s a pause that he quickly fills with _please_ but she waves him off and agrees. She goes over the basics, says if he messes up he’s totally grounded.  
He nods emphatically, over the moon when she even says he can pick out whatever color he wants to.  
He picks a lilac-lavender. The label on the bottom of the bottle says the name of the color is _Stockholm Syndrome_.

Hands closing around her ankles, he slides her closer so that her feet rest in his lap. He bites back an instinctive apology, smiling wide at her yelp of protest—he needs the upper hand. He can’t be in control if he’s a stuttering, clumsy mess. He’ll most certainly embarrass himself, he’s learned this much, so he opts for silence.  
He is growing and now he understands that all things are about strategy. 

Concentration honed in on making each stroke of varnish perfect, he finishes with a triumphant grin  
and then  
he flicks his wrist and swings the brush up from the bottle one last time with way too much force  
and the polish splatters and dribbles up her foot and on to the leg of her pajama tights, all the way up her thigh, painting her exactly how he wills it, threatening to drip everywhere at the slightest stir.  
A perfectly calculated fluke.  
There’s residual droplets of splatter on her sweater.  
What a lucky coincidence, the way the sofa is spared for the time being. 

“Michael,” she shrieks, freezing in place, “Constance will kill me!”  
  
It’s a half-truth, if we’re being honest.  
Grama loved pointing out that the sofa was one of a kind, Louis XX-something-something-style regency or whatever the fuck, what with its hand-carved claw feet and Italian cushions. 

Michael pretends to think for a pause, tells her he thinks maybe she should roll the leg of her tights up if she wants to keep it from dripping all over the sofa.  
She tenses.  
  
“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”  
  
Now he has to lie to Miss Julien.  
He knits his brows together and frowns, a portrait of offense.  
  
“I didn’t mean to.”  
  
It’s for her own good, anyways. 

She’s angry, she feels like she’s going to throw up, she reminds him that neither of them are nearly useful enough to know how to bippity boppity boo nail polish from vintage fucking imported designer couch cushions.  
And then he gets what he wants, again, and he’s slowly helping her roll the fabric up and up, folding it over itself until the pooling globs of polish up to her hip are wedged safely between the confines of her tights, and her leg is bare for him, marred with ribbons of pink and white tissue gliding in long, jagged, serpentine strokes, and his hands are touching them, and  
in an instinctive, reflexive breach of character  
she smacks him straight across the face.  
The lights flicker. 

A scowl distorts her features.  
Now, she absolutely knows he did it on purpose.  
She never gave him permission to touch.  
What, is this going to be some John Green novel? Is angel-featured, misunderstood work-in-progress Michael Langdon going to kiss his way up her scars and tell her she’s beautiful while she cries?  
Of course he won’t.  
Julien is not stupid, she’s not a dreamy romantic, and she’s certainly not a needy brat that wants people to feel sorry for her. She doesn’t need her pain validated.  
They aren’t battle scars, they don’t tell stories, and they aren’t beautiful. They mean nothing.  
_They’re just there._

Michael is staring at her, stunned, waiting, but he’s already opened the door and the thread of her self control is snapping under the weight of his hands on her and the air on her exposed leg and the way he keeps fucking looking at her like she’s god with his throat swallowing so slowly. 

Jaw set hard, she stands, yanks the tights off and throws them at the trembling, manipulative, beautiful cat-eyed creature that kneels before her. Her sweater follows, and she stands straight in the burning annoyance spreading from the pit of her belly.  
  
“Look only at my fucking feet.”  
  
His roaming eyes tear away reluctantly from her form to her ankles.  
She pushes him down to sit on the backs of his legs with the heel of her foot, places herself back on the couch.  
  
“Clean it up.”

He takes an alcohol-soaked cotton pad and begins swiping it at the pastel polish drying up her foot and over her ankle. His eyes flicker up to the deep scar all the way round the middle of her stomach, it glides like a river on a road map. He dares to trail up her body, towards the silk red bra. She knows red is his favorite color.  
  
Grabbing a fistful of his hair, she pulls him towards her, leans in, voice low through gritted teeth, “I said look at my fucking feet.”  
  
He all but melts into her knuckles, a soft, breathy moan breaking free from his quivering mouth. With every ounce of his will he squeezes his eyes shut, reverts them back to her ankles.  
His palms are hot, he can feel his temperature spiking. He nods. She lets go. His neck moves towards her fleeing hand, he wants it back. 

She places both hands on the sides of his face, thumbnails digging into his cheekbones. She leans down so close to him that he can smell spearmint.  
  
“You, Michael Langdon,” her voice is barely above a whisper placed at his temple, “are getting way too comfortable.”  
  
She snakes her hands down to close around his neck, thumbs over the notch in his throat.  
The plates don’t move. The pots and pans don’t clatter. The knives and cutlery in the drawer don’t even stir. Currents of electricity aren’t threatening to break the bulbs.  
  
Michael is silent, back straight, staring up at her, expectant. There are no tears. She would never give him anything he can’t handle, never. He doesn’t think she would hurt him and he knows if she ever did, he’d deserve it.  
  
“I am tired of head games,” her grip tightens. “What in God’s name do you want from me, Michael,” her fingers are pressing into his skin, “by all means, tell me.”

Michael doesn’t have words for the things he wants, wouldn’t know how to ask for them, let alone tell her. If he did, he would surely beg.  
It’s the first time he has ever found himself anticipating punishment and he can’t yet compute the excitement that has all the blood leaving his head and rushing down towards his belly. His eyes go dark, his lids are heavy, everything is running molten inside of him. There is no petulance when he closes his eyes, hums quietly, leans in to her hands. Her grip falters only momentarily, resumes a little tighter than before.

Whatever this is, he wants more of it.  
His eyes open and he smiles, all teeth, up at her. He’s gently rocking, eyes languid and heavy, pink warming his cheeks.  
  
“I would say sorry but I’m not.”  
  
She’s almost taken aback by the leveled assurance in his voice. She’s definitely taken aback when she looks down and sees where all his blood has gathered, something he seems wholly unaware of, and the shock of it sends her hands flying from off his neck, crossing her arms tight, fists clenched.  
He frowns, furrows his brow, looks at her to wordlessly ask _Why did you take it away?_ , like it were a present, just for him. 

The knot in her throat won’t swallow down, the realization that she has made a very big mistake overflowing her with embarrassment.  
Michael tentatively brings his trembling hand back to her leg, wraps the other around her thigh, round all the marks, nuzzles his head over her knee, hugs himself over her tightly.  
  
“I’m sorry I’m not sorry.”  
  
They stay that way, silent, for a few minutes. She isn’t sure she should touch him when he’s like this but has resolved to rest her cupped palm around the underside of his jaw.

Through the curtains, a car’s headlights flood slowly over the driveway. Her royal highness is probably being ubered home. She shakes Michael’s shoulder, raises quickly, gathers her discarded articles of clothing.  
  
“Come on, let’s clean all this up before Grama walks up and sees the crime scene. Get your socks on.” 

He picks up the pail of polish and follows her down the hall.  
  
“Wait a second, watch this!”  
  
She doesn’t look back.  
  
“Hang on, Michael, we don’t have time,” she’s making a beeline towards her closed bedroom door.

Flinging the door open and closing it behind her, the clothes drop to the floor and she crashes breathlessly into the desk when she sees Michael is already sitting cross-legged on the bed, socks on, beaming with pride.  
  
“Goodnight Miss Julian.”  
  
She blinks and he’s gone again, the only proof of him being there the pail of nail polish on her nightstand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Steps on podium* I’d like to thank my readers, all five of them. Your encouragement and support means a lot.


	6. Chapter 6

_”The hole in my heart is so big,_  
_room enough for the sky to pass through holding Jupiter’s hand._  
_I can fill it with a mountain._  
_I can fill it with a name._  


-Aracelis Girmay, ‘The Piano’

  


The roses are in bloom, bathing the backyard in vivid red. Thorny stems tangle together, bushes overgrown and mangled into each other at every turn, a labyrinth of green and burgundy. The climbing roses, once her favorite, are crawling up and forcing themselves between the slats of the white picket privacy fence, twining around and engulfing everything like ivy. Julien is in the garden, pruning the flowers.  
But Julien is really in the garden crying. 

The hedge trimmers are stabbed into a fresh pile of dirt and soil is caked underneath her fingernails. It dirties her knees, her elbows, her arms, her yellow sundress, splotches of dirt on her wetted face. The sun is high and inviting coupled with the cooling breeze—a day that would be beautiful, perfect even, for anyone else. Ideal once even for her.  
But she doesn’t think that anyone else had just spent the better half of the morning and afternoon burying a human corpse in what was discovered to already be a burial ground for the tiny bones of a slaughtered pet cemetery. It took hours for her to uproot old bushes, adding more and more little rodent skeletons to the collection, creating a hole large enough to dump the bled-out priest into. 

Michael had stormed off across the street, to the withering manor she had only recently discovered was known as _Murderhouse_. Constance was in the living room, record player blasting—on a bender of her own from the string of events that lead up to now—just loud enough that Julien was able to drown her desperate, howling sobs into the ground. Wiping away a long string of spit connecting her to the dirt, she looks to the sky. The heat beats down across her face, large sunglasses disguising her hurt and shame. She has cried so hard that there’s nothing left to drip from her swollen eyes, throat so hoarse her voice is lost, body heavy with fatigue. Fresh, weepy blisters decorate her palms. The shovel sits at her knees, three pots of yellow sweet-scented Ausmas ready to be planted, to bloom from above the slaughtered man like corpseflower. 

She squeezes her eyes shut one more time, rapidly wiping at her face with the backs of her dirtied hands. Flakes of dried blood mingle with tears, with snot, with spit. God, she could sleep for days now. For weeks. For eternity.  
A shadow cuts across the expanse of glimmering leaves and petals.  
  
“Let’s put an end to these dramatics now, child.”  
  
A pair of gloves fall to the dirt at her knees. She turns her head over her shoulder. Constance stands over her, blotting out the sun, draped in a fine silk blue dress and swaying drunkenly in her taupe kitten heels. She gently taps Julien’s shoulder with a slick glass of icy lemonade until she takes it. Pulling up a plastic chair, she seats herself beside the grief-shaken girl, crossing her legs and adjusting her Prada sunglasses, slowly gazing across the expanse of overgrown brush and flora.  
  
“I was in that exact spot, too. Just like you are now. Ugly tears and all.”  
  
Reaching into the front of her dress, she pulls out a tiny purse pack of Misty slims and a zippo, lights her own and offers one to Julien wordlessly. This time, she chooses to take it, leaning in to Constance’s cupped hand and dragging off the flame.  
  
“Is this the first—“ Julian’s voice trails off, barely above a whisper, hollow and rasped and entirely gone. Constance shakes her head, stare still intent on the roses.  
  
“No, little one, and it damn well won’t be the last,” she smoothes her dress over her knees, wrinkled hands shaking gently with tremor. She does not allow her voice to betray her, she must not—will not—cry, although she wavers, “I’m sorry I never told you. I couldn’t have possibly had any idea you would end up being so—“ she looks over to glance down at the curled-in shape of Julien, “— _dedicated_ , you know, to trying to help my pitiful little family.” Her attention turns back towards the roses, trembling hand rising to take a long drag from the petite cigarette, thick smoked frames of her glasses hiding the mist glossing her vision. 

“I can’t do this anymore, Julien. I—“ her hands go over her face. She will not cry. Sniffing, she collects herself, straightens her back, taps the ash of her cigarette into the dirt. Her voice is guarded, low, determined, firm, “you know, that day I called you, I had almost called the priest. I was at my wits end, I really was. I had almost called him, but you answered first.” Her fingers fly to her mouth, she purses her lips around them. “He’s killed two nannies before you, and now...now, he’s killed a holy man.” 

Julien sputters, coughs, nearly chokes on the lemonade. “You were just going to let me die, too?” Her heart pumps with terror. She could have just as easily been slain nanny number three, and nobody would have known her gone, nobody would have been looking for her. She’d be buried under a cluster of roses, rotting away with half the local strays and possibly even two other discarded caretakers.

Constance leans down to level her face with the girls, puts a hand on her cheek, voice fierce, “Now, you know. You know, more than anyone ever will, that I would have done anything— _anything_!—for that boy.” Low whimpers begin to rise to the surface, a morose gift of vulnerability to Julien that she knows would never be shared with anyone else. She covers Constance’s hand with her own, nodding solemnly, tears she didn’t know she still had left beginning to sting the corners of her eyes.  
  
“And what with your little—your _indiscretion_ —all of this, this—,” Constance is stuttering now, tears rolling down her face, “I know it’s time.” With a final sniff, she snatches her hand away from Julien, “It’s time for me to go.”

The _indiscretion_ that Constance was referencing happened the previous night, and it had set the catastrophic chain of events leading up to this disaster into motion. 

They had spent most of yesterday morning and afternoon out in the garden, intent on surprising Constance with how beautiful and neat they were going to make the flowers. It was hot, very hot, and it was Julien’s first time feeling free to wear shorts in a very long time. She reclined on the folding chair on the back porch, looking at Michael from behind her sunglasses and scribbling in her little book. He sat across from her with his elbows resting on his knees, arms dangling, legs spread wide, swirling a popsicle in his red-stained mouth. She had placed a dust-pink pair of horned sunglasses from Constance’s vanity over his ears, and couldn’t seem to tear herself away from what a lovely sight it was. He seemed totally oblivious, cherry syrup dripping down his chin. 

It was getting harder for her to act the perfect picture of impartial when everything he did seemed to pull her towards him. Earlier, when she had smeared sunscreen across his face, he had dragged the bridge of his nose up her neck, wiping off the excess, laughter jingling into the side of her throat. His half-lidded stare watched her, waiting, and all she could do was rip her body from his grasp and excuse herself, bringing back his popsicle when she was sure the heat had fled from her cheeks. 

She showed him how to clip the hedges, smiling warmly at how gingerly he trimmed the leaves, face scrunched in concentration. Together they worked their way around the yard, christening the bushes with epsom, gathering dead leaves and branches. Michael had began to lag so far behind her side that she paused, breath hitching when she saw him stooped over a withering bush of wilted petals, bringing his fingertips to it and revitalizing it back to vivid red and bright green, its drooping form rising and blooming soft, nourished petals. He hadn’t even realized she was watching, nodding to himself. His little smile of satisfaction and pleasure could’ve broken her heart into pieces.  
What a special, beautiful boy.  
How his hands could cause such chaos but also create so much delight. 

They were sweating, sleepy, growing languid from the UV rays collecting warmth into their skin. The sky was beginning to turn pink, soft around the edges. Julien had made herself an icecream cone as a reward for the work they had completed, three scoops of bubblegum.  
Michael had squeezed himself beside her on the reclined sunbathing chair, watching her work her tongue around the bubblegum cone through idle chatter.  
  
“Can I have some, please, Miss Julien?”  
  
“I’ll make you one in a minute.”  
  
He shook his head, “Nuh-uh, I just want a bite.”  
  
She tilted the cone towards him and he lapped from the side of it, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. 

She resumed working her way around it, spinning the waffle cone in her hand.  
  
“Can I have a little bit more, pretty please?”  
  
She flicked her wrist up and tilted the icecream to his mouth again, _Since your pleases are the prettiest_.  
It continued a couple more times until he rose to straddle himself over her lap, shoulders caging her, hands placed on the arms of the chair as he began licking the front of the cone opposite to her.  
She flinched away from him and his hands shot up to cup her hand that held up their snack, holding her in place around the cone, his weight falling atop her thighs, licking the melting pink that dripped down her fingers. She laughed, so he did too. Lady and the Tramp was one of the first movies they had ever watched together, after all.

He tilted it towards her mouth and she obliged, until they were both lapping up the dessert from opposite sides, no longer laughing, droplets of icecream falling to her chest. Eventually, his tongue began working its way up her skin, sucking up the stickiness from her clavicle. The empty cone hung limply from her grip, ragged breaths fluttering from her throat, betraying her sensibilities. 

She became very aware of the friction at her thighs, the way he’d been very slowly sliding himself against her, a biologically-ingrained instinct he was merely answering to, and she had dropped the cone on the porch and brought both palms to his chest, breaking him away from her. His brows had knit, head tilted at her in confusion. “I’m sorry,” he breathed, inching away from her and bringing both his legs over the side of the chair and crossing them to hide his shame, blushing in embarrassment. 

She had shook her head, stretching out her toes to rise and reach for the sogging, dented waffle cone before it collected ants.  
  
“We’re covered in dirt, come on. Let’s clean up.” 

Julien had drawn the bath, helped him lift the shirt over his head although she knew it wasn’t necessary anymore. She knew a lot of the things weren’t necessary anymore, but both of them seemed to be reluctant to adapt to the new circumstances, deliberately ignoring that Michael didn’t actually need her to do any of these things now, not the way he used to. She was beginning to think he didn’t need her anymore at all, but he was hell-bent on making sure her assistance was always required anyways, so it didn’t bother her much. It gives her purpose.

The tub was extra sudsy, overflowing with bubbles. No ducks, no sail boats. He didn’t ask for bubbles anymore either, but she always put them there, mostly for her own sake. It worked wonders for modesty. When she peered through the curtains, the sun outside was hovering close the ground, ready to disappear below the earth.  
  
“You can come in, too. There’s room.”  
  
Spinning to face him, she had almost protested—but the look in his eyes was pleading, endearingly hopeful. For reasons she did not understand, she suddenly felt desperately, supernaturally compelled to listen to him, come closer. Part of her was aware that compulsion could easily be one of his abilities, that her faculties were momentarily stolen from her, but the other half was just relieved to have an excuse to close the gap. _They were having fun, all day. Why let it end now_?

Peeling off her clothes, she seated herself in the warm nest of bubbles at his side, ignoring the way his eyes studied her without reservation.  
  
“Miss Julien, you’re really pretty this way.”  
  
“I guess it’s nice someone thinks so.”  
  
“Do you say all those things ‘cus of these?” His hands lightly traced a curving, healed gash at her rib and she sank further into the bubbles.  
  
“Wash the icecream off your face, you nosy brat.” 

At some point they ended up seated back against back, his head tilted to rest over hers. They sat like this, talking, sighing, for however long. Talking to Michael had become comfortable, symbiotic. It was no longer a chore, her being pelted with questions, walking on eggshells, careful of her words. Although still lacking in tact and not always receptive to humor, the boy was damn funny, even if not on purpose. It was the sheltered obliviousness to social programming that she found the most sweet, most precious. He hadn’t been taught to hold back, to hide his feelings, to break and hollow himself out, to be x or y. He knows nothing of rank, of status, of keeping appearances. His honesty and transparency is what makes him special. He sees everything through an untainted lense. On the other side of the coin, it must also tie in to his sharp ability to see through the performative, deceptive nature of everything, to reach in and pluck out whatever he wants. 

The two of them are so close that it’s as though they share telepathy, no magic needed. The two of them are so close that sometimes, it’s like watching themselves move in a mirror. She supposes that is what proximity and companionship does, syncs you together. They are mostly equals at this point, but Michael is content to remain in his place at her feet, for now.

The bubbles had began to melt so she opted to wash out his hair, reveling in the way he leaned back into her as she massaged his scalp. She closed her eyes.  
After a few minutes of silence, Michael had finally gathered his courage.  
  
“Julien?”  
  
It was the very first time she had noticed him saying her name singularly.  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“How do I make it go away faster?”  
  
Her eyes flit open. “What do you mean?”  
  
He rolled his eyes to the ceiling, as though it were the most obvious question he had ever asked her. “You know _exactly_ what I mean.”  
It took her a minute to compute what he’d been asking, mulling over it, and when the realization dawned on her, she had brought her palm over her eyes, _Oh, oh god_. 

Really, they’re so close, would it matter? If they’re so close, could it hurt anything? She hadn’t been thinking of the consequences that always kept her from indulging in the curiosity, the temptation, of it. If she had at that time, she never would have gave into his request in the first place.  
Her reservations had gave way to boldness—for whatever reason—that day. Her walls had collapsed, and with them went the caution, the need to protect the delicate balance between them.  
  
“Do you want me to show you how?” She was twirling wet curls of his hair round her fingers and his whole body went still, rigid.  
  
“Will you really?”  
  
“If you ask me nicely.”  
  
He had turned to face her, eyes wide with need, smirking, nodding eagerly. _Please, please, please, I’ve been so good today, you know I have_. 

Initially she had leaned back against the tub, instructing him to bring his back against her chest, hooking her feet over his knees and wrapping her arms round his waist. His frame swallowed her, obscuring her view, so she choked down her pride and instead moved to position herself between his spread legs, placing his fidgeting hands to rest at either side of him on the rim. He was soaked through, perfect, shimmering with drops of water.  
Grabbing the bottle of conditioner by the faucet behind her, she emptied a generous glob into her palm, _You’ll want to use this_. He watched, breath loud and uneven, head tilted.  
  
“Lay back. Close your eyes.”  
  
He nodded, obeying, fervent and speechless. 

Focused entirely on his face, she brought the palm of conditioner to slide up the stiff length of him, leaning into the way he lurched forward towards her touch, attention anchored to how his breath hissed and broke into a low, soft moan. There wasn’t any way to contain the smile splitting wide across her face. 

How many times had she thought about this, had she entertained the idea of seeing him in this very state of divine vulnerability? How many times has she thought of sliding herself down on him, watching him beg, entirely lost in the throes of it? It drove her crazy that she had to make elaborate excuses to lock herself away for only minutes, finding whatever little private time she had to touch herself, being drove absolutely mad by absence of freedom with him constantly glued to her side. Her orgasm quotient was never met anymore.  
She was lucky—in the beginning especially—if she were able to tip toe off to the bathroom while he was sleeping to close the lid of the toilet and perch herself upon it, trying to give herself one fleeting climax for the week.  
But fantasy was all it was. She never dared think of it as anything more than that. She wasn’t going to be _stupid_ about it. 

Hands twisting the base of Michael’s length slowly, she started to squeeze, apply more and more constricting pressure, drinking in the way his mouth parted open, brows furrowed, desperately trying to even out the erratic mewling ripping from deep in his chest. Her other hand roamed his rippling stomach, dropping to caress a thigh, tracing its way back to the center of him to draw light circles over his taint with her fingernails. She was dizzy with the way he had began to gently convulse, gasps tearing through him and echoing off the bathroom tiles.  
It had made her hungrier, made her literally salivate with desire. 

As his body began to tense and stretch itself taught, throat‘s hymn of sweet moans fizzing out into guttural, deep groans, the electricity began to vibrate from the wiring within the walls and the bulbs burned bright, humming loudly with electrical current. She stopped pumping him in her hand. The lights dimmed back to normal once more.  
He dared open his eyes to meet hers, confused, pleading, breathless. 

Unplugging the drain, she rose, wrapping herself in a towel and ordering him to follow, telling him to _shut up, just shut up_ , when he offered a slew of apologies, trailing close behind her, water dripping on the floorboards.  
Her willpower was flung far, far away, made room for something far darker and more aggressive, and she needed it. 

“Sit.” She pointed at her bed. He obeyed.  
Spitting a long string of saliva on his erection, she took his hand in hers and placed it round his girth for him, wrapping his thumb and forefingers round in the way she felt best. She moved her hands over his until he settled into a rhythm, jerking slowly.  
  
“Just like that.”  
  
His face was contorted in ministration again, overwhelmed. She placed herself down between his knees, “Look at me.”  
  
His slanted eyes were weighed with pleasure, with reverence, with worship, with overstimulation, palest blue engulfed in the blown-out black of his pupils.  
  
“Promise me,” she flattened her tongue against his balls, dragging it up up over his stroking hand, flicking it to circle the tip of his cock, lightly lapping at the slick beads of precum gathering, entranced by the sounds of his needy whines, “promise we won’t ever speak of this again.”  
  
He pauses in his whimpering to bring his other hand to hers, too lost to protest, pinkies interlocking as she kissed them, a sacred vow.  
  
“ _Promise_ ,” was all he could choke out.

The lights were humming again, shrill and coursing with power, burning bright and turning on throughout the entire house. She wrapped her lips around the head while he continued to pump himself into his hand, slurping him in a devastating pattern as he began to keen and cry out, spurting himself into her mouth, hands clumsily reaching to grip the sides of her head, _Mama! Mama! Mama!_ , folding his body in towards her, drifting towards the ceiling, spent. 

Every lightbulb in the house had surged with power and burst at the same time he did, his nerve endings splintered, showering the floor in shards of glass, blanketing everything in black. There was a moment of quiet between them as she swallowed the thick hot coat of him sticking to her throat, as he lay trying to catch his breath, gasping for air.  
It was in this moment that the reality of what just occurred had finally came to kick her in the teeth. Her stomach curdled with guilt.  
  
“I’m going to get the flashlights from the kitchen,” she shrugged on her bathrobe and a pair of sandals, slowly feeling her way to the door.  
He had nodded although she could barely make out his figure in the dark, laying flat on his back, heart struggling to regain its tempo, unable to form words as he forced air back into his lungs. 

Glass crunched under her as she crossed through the living room and into the kitchen. Jesus Christ.  
How would they fix this?  
She peered through the curtain of the side door. The entire block, as far as she could see, was black and lightless. _Uh oh_.  
Fumbling around the drawers, she had finally found the flashlights, shaking one on and lighting her path back to the bedroom.  
As she retraced her way back towards the living room she jumped with a yelp, flashlight flying out of her grip and rolling onto the floor. Constance had been seated on the couch with her legs crossed, cigarette poised in hand.  
“We’re having a _family meeting_ in the morning. I’ve already made the phone call.” 

A wind chime jingles in the wind and slices the silence in half. Constance has recollected herself, all prim posture and calculation, hardly a sniffle to betray her. The breeze rises and falls, whips the warmth around them, chiming melody serene.  
How cruel for such ugly things to stain the memory of such beautiful weather.  
Constance raises from the plastic chair, stumbles slightly, straightens her dress. She looks down on the girl one last time.  
  
“I’m leaving now, child. I’m not coming back, and I’m not asking you to stay. I suggest you leave, too, while there’s still nobody there to stop you.”  
  
Julien stares out toward the sun long after Constance has left.  
It’s the last time she ever sees her alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _The Shirelles- Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?_


	7. Chapter 7

_”Cicadas bury themselves in small mouths_  
_of the tree’s hollow, lie against the bark tongues like amulets,_  
_though it is I who pray I might shake off this skin and be raised_  
_from the ground again. I have nothing_  
_to confess. I don’t yet know that I possess_  
_a body built for love.”_  
  
-Richie Hofmann, ‘Idyll’ 

  


The sun disappeared almost entirely underground, casting the yard in cold shadow. The street and its surrounding block remain shrouded mostly in silence, save the occasional echo of a dog bark in the distance and the periodical tinkling of wind chimes. There in the dissonant quiet stands an unassuming house, peeling white picket fence caging in a plot of land overgrown with hundreds of red roses. In the very center of the brambled garden, three clusters of brilliant canary Ausmas now rise from the dirt in a careful row, nestled neatly in freshly laid soil. Beside the yellow roses rocks a girl coated in dirt and blood spatter. Underneath the yellow roses lies the body of a man in cleric, throat slit asunder ear to ear. 

The girl stirs rarely from her perch in the rocking chair, if only to reposition a sleeping limb or brush an errant insect off of her skin. The exhaustion keeps her bound to the earth, guardian of the floral graveyard, empty as void, scraped clean by violent emotion and left only with static and muscle fatigue. She waits for sirens to come. She waits for officers pointing flashlights and guns at her back. She waits to be ordered to hit the ground hands up. She waits for handcuffs and cell and concrete and lock and key. She waits, and they never come.

How long has she been out there, staring at the clouds? Nine hours? Ten? She isn’t sure. A light flips on inside the house and blankets the backyard in dull glow. The needle of the record player goes down and the walls are once again humming with music. Constance has clearly returned from her moment of defiance, as the girl had predicted. She was a fool for thinking she could leave. 

The burn of Constance Langdon’s backhand still tingles against her cheek. She had fully earned that crack across her face the night before, and she’d be surprised if there weren’t a bruise blooming in its wake. Pieces of the woman’s shrill, pseudo-coherent manifesto reverberate through her memory, _Well it’s not my fault you were galavanting around my house in heat, bringing shame to my name, a pre-paid venereal disease indulging in the filth and degradation of my unholy grandson like a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah!_

The woman had sunk to the floor—momentarily weeping in such a cracked, shrunken way that one might almost find her human—before rising and striking the girl with casual ferocity.  
  
“I was going to take care of this ages ago—the very day you had showed up on my doorstep, looking like some hooking baby convict,” her feral sneer gave no quarter, “I should have put an end to of all of this that very day, just as it was meant. And that is _my_ mistake.” 

Julien didn’t feel it necessary to say anything when she watched the scorned woman swipe the flashlight from off the floor, stumbling to her bedroom with her heels clutched in one hand, slamming the door so hard it resounded throughout the entire house. What _could_ she say? _I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize you came home when I was in the middle of jerking off your fallen grandson to the point that I’ll need to take a trip to Home Depot while you miss your DVR recording of Charmed tonight. It was only this one time, I promise._

When she awoke that very morning, it was to the sound of Michael crying from across the hall. Hurling herself out of her bed and half-crawling her way across the floorboards, she chased the sound of his voice with urgency, opening his door to find him curled on the floor with his hands over his ears, sobbing. A priest stood over him waving an aspergillum in one hand, leather-bound book in the other, speaking in tongues. His every garbled sentence was emphasized with the spray of holy water, raining down over the floor, hitting Michael across his toes. 

Fevered blush had marked his face as though he were struck with fever, tears flowing freely down his cheeks, body rocking and whimpers endless, nails raking through his hair as his palms repeatedly slapped into his ears with desperate force. He barely registered her presence at his side, her voice shouting his name, hands shaking his shoulders. _Make him stop_ , he had howled, _make him stop_. 

Julien had turned to the man with enough fire in her belly to burn the entire wretched house down. _Leave him alone_ she had said, _Can’t you see that you’re hurting him?_ , holding her hands in place over Michael’s to stop him from continually slamming his knuckles into his temples.  
The old man didn’t even pause his chanting and proceeded to flit the water in her face, directing a few lines of the gibberish her way. A knot of rage twisted in her stomach. Michael tugged at her shirt collar.

“Miss Julien, I saw the things in his head.”  
She turned her attention back towards the trembling boy, back catching the sprinkle of water the priest was continually dousing in their direction, his prayer indecipherable to her. The water did not sear her skin. It did not melt through Michael’s feet.

“What do you mean? What did you see?”  
  
“He isn’t good, Julien. He does ugly things,” he pointed a trembling finger in the man’s direction, “He’s hurt so many of them.”  
  
Julien had froze in place.  
“Are you sure? How do you know?”  
  
“I saw it, in his head. It’s all up there. He’s put his hands all over them, told them they’d burn up if they didn’t listen. I can’t make it go away, it’s all up in my ears now,” his voice broke into another wail, “they’re all crying up here and I can’t make them stop.”  
  
“Who is crying, Michael?”  
  
“All of those girls and boys.”  
  
That was enough.  
With little thought she had slowly rose back up to her feet, faced the man in ironed black cleric, rosary wrapped around his fingers, wrinkled skin translucent as paper mache, fierce determination in his eyes, tongue rapidly rolling over words she did not understand. 

It was in her hand before she even consciously had the thought, really. She isn’t even sure of how it got there, the letter opener. Her feet were taking her closer to him, everything around her suddenly drowned out by the humming fervor in her fingertips. Just enough force, and she’d split him right open without even having to use her _gift_. Hell, she’d cut off his hands, had she something sharp and effective enough. She stopped right in front of him like a woman possessed, lifting the letter opener up farther into the air, leaning into the warm, sensation of her little power telling her to _go ahead, do it now, cleanse the world of another one of them, better off._

The old man did not waver, not a single syllable of his chorus of Latin faltering as she held the thing up, leaning in towards his spirited hail Marys. His hand sprang forward to meet her face, bearing down on the top of her scalp, thumb digging into her forehead, chanting over her as though exorcising a demon. The letter opener clattered to the floor, force of his palm pushing her backwards. 

“Don’t you put your ugly hands on her!”  
  
Michael was up and marching towards the spectacle enraged, letter opener flying up to meet his open hand. Before she could even conceive what was unfolding before her, Michael had lunged onto the old man and knocked him on his back, pinning him to the floor, raising the small blade overhead with teeth bared. The priest’s neck was flayed open, skin unzipped. Blood misted over Michael’s face, christening him as the holy water had only minutes before. She fell to her knees, crawled to the sputtering man, fountain of crimson pouring from his jugular, glassy eyes pinned towards the ceiling. He choked and stuttered and twitched, and then he stopped. The hum in her fingertips had ceased, trance lifted. Instead, she was now encumbered with the awareness that she was seated in a pool of blood next to a dead man. 

Long before she began to fully grasp the gravity of what had happened, Michael had already risen, pulled out the chair at his desk and sat, tears evaporated, complexion level again, the face of absolute calm.  
  
“Wanna play Mario Kart?”

Behind her, the back door scrapes open. She’s mentally preparing herself for the cruelty of Constance’s drunken, biting tongue. 

“Miss Julien?” 

_Michael._  
His voice is low and soft with that familiar timidness, his frequent choice of apology. She doesn’t answer, even as he’s on his knees at her feet, searching her face for something, anything. 

“Are you still mad at me?” 

She won’t look him in the eye. Yes, she’s mad at him, he decides. She’s mad at him and he did something bad and now she will run away and she won’t ever give him anymore presents. He hugs her legs, caresses her knees with his temple, content to purr wordless sorries into her tattered legs because it always, always works.

“Michael.”

His head shoots up, eyes gleaming with hope, “Yeah?”

“Where is your grandmother?” 

The silence that follows doesn’t really hold any significance. Nothing holds significance, not anymore. It’s only empty, humid air of summer and clots of dirt. Shining blisters bubbling on her palms. Dried blood brown. Eye-swell and lips cracked, dirty. A shovel, an overturned drinking glass, a pair of kid gloves. Two white cigarette filters. A stupid girl in a rocking chair telling a rib of the devil she forgives him.

He’s wrapped around her legs, cheek resting on her thigh, a crown of tarnished gold splayed across her lap. He breathes her in and closes his eyes, swallows like it hurts him. 

“I don’t know.” 

Her exhale is spiked with relief. Then the woman isn’t dead, split open somewhere in a pool of blood like the priest, or the strays, or the rodents, or the _nannies_. When she begins to circle the pads of her fingers over his scalp, the gesture isn’t meant to comfort _him_ so much as it is for her. There are many things she should be saying to him, about right and wrong and hurt and consequence. There should be no compassion when dealing with such monumental error. She’s too exhausted to open her mouth, jaw snared shut. She will wait til morning, she decides. She isn’t quite certain any of this is real yet.

“Will you answer me,” Michael is pleading, ripping her away from inside her head. He has been speaking to her for the last two minutes. She hadn’t heard a thing. She shakes her head, it’s all she can offer. _Just go to bed_ , she wills, _please just go to bed_. His mouth twitches into a frown. He heard her. 

She doesn’t want to have to look at him, to think about anything, to take any responsibility in this fucking disaster. What is she supposed to do at this point, when it has just been cemented into her that her existence will only ever be chased by horror? That she can’t even run away to be a fucking babysitter far, far from where misfortune birthed her without somehow maintaining her status as harbinger of annihilation? 

Growing visibly frustrated, brows knit, he rises to his feet and grabs both her wrists. He pulls her up and her elbows pop, just barely catching her limp weight in his clumsy hands, dragging her toward the screen door. Dreadfully unsure, clueless to a fault, he offers her a hail of _It’s okays_ , of _It’ll be alrights_ , an entire arsenal of gentle encouragements he only knows because he had learned them from her very mouth. 

Dragging her dead weight through the hall, it dawns on him that she has done this very favor for him—countless times—without a word of protest. Embarrassment knots his belly. It really isn’t fair, he realizes this now, stopping to re-adjust her sinking weight in his arms. There’s something about the way she stares out into nothing that makes him nervous, makes him feel her slipping away from him—like Grama had. He can’t let that happen. No, he won’t let it happen. 

They make it into the bathroom, her bare heels dragging. He perches her atop the lid of the toilet, turns on the tap, tests the heat. Peels off her dress, clouds of dirt raining down on the floor in its unveiling, helps her seat herself into the empty basin. He detaches the shower head and begins gently dousing her like he is watering the flowers. 

There she sits, naked and bleating, dirt swirling down the drain, faintest trail of diluted blood. There now isn’t a part of them both that the other has not seen. Her soul is halved, cracked open, split in two—like an unwrapped present meant for him. He decides to keep just one piece, if only because it would be too selfish to devour the entire thing. 

She isn’t crying. She isn’t doing much of anything at all. Her only visible reaction to his touch is a flinch when he accidentally pulls at her hair too hard while working shampoo into a lather, which is immediately met with a chorus of _I’m sorry_. Had circumstances been different, she’d appreciate the way he concentrates so fiercely on the task of finding her skin underneath the dirt and grime and blood. Under different circumstances, it would be very sweet, the way he touches her like she’d wither away if his fingers weren’t feather-light. 

His focus is a testament to his will, a way of asking for forgiveness where he knows words won’t suffice. Such is the nature of their symbiosis—words are not what keeps them bound, rather, the quiet understanding that knits them close as though they operate together in singular autonomy. Words are not necessary when they both speak to each other with action, with transparency, with small gestures, with consideration and knowing. 

Love—something that is better shown than spoken—harnesses great power when it develops into a wordless, simple language of affection rather than a string of sentences and gilded poetry. It needs no prose, no performance. Julien knows that love shows itself with certainty not in the way Michael says sorry, but in the way he tends to her as though she is an idol he worships at an altar, bowed to pray at a sacred temple. It shows itself in how he rinses her three times over, checks every bend for dirt, doesn’t let his eyes linger in places he knows she would rather him not look. How he fluffs her dry, puts her in his most comfortable t shirt, carries her (unsteadily, slowly) to her bed with all the care he can manage, tucks the blankets under her arms, a glass of water placed on her nightstand. 

Julien’s eyes are closed before her head hits the pillow, curled into herself, voice hoarse and small, “Can we wait to read our chapter tomorrow?” 

“It’s okay. I’ve already read the whole book.”

It takes three days for Miss Julien to come out of her bedroom, to speak again. Three days, and Constance still has not came home. Three days of Michael sleeping at the foot of Julien’s bed, and he decides to tell her about the house across the street. He tells her about how he had been birthed there, how Grama told him he mustn’t tell anyone, made him swear. About the spirits, Grama’s frequent visits. How the house is so alive he can feel it breathe—but nobody ever wants to talk to him, the little ones won’t even play with him. Julien’s grip on reality is unraveling before his very eyes and he’s too gone in his recounting of the time he tried to play catch with one of the boys but he ran away, wouldn’t even take his toy back. He points out the red ball on his shelf.

“Is this where you hid after you left me alone with Constance?”

Guilt settles into the grooves of his expression. He can’t meet her stare, twirling his spoon in his near-empty bowl of milk. He nods, head dipped towards the floor. 

Michael had been seated at the end of his bed, feet dangling, enthralled in his MMO when Constance came back from the corner store. She had been gone only fifteen minutes, maybe less. Fifteen minutes was all it took for her to open his door and see the body of Reverend Warren, a man she had known at least thirty years, flat on the floor, congealing blood seeping into the floorboards. The girl—the help she _paid_ to clean up Michael’s messes—was sprawled on the ground, painted in red, leaning against the bed frame staring dumbly at the wall. _Useless._

Constance had began screaming obscenities until she thought her lungs would give out, dam finally breaking, sixty-some tears of pain, of betrayal, _of atoning for the sins of men_ flooding from her crumbling figure as the agony of it ripped through her. She had murdered for men. She had dismembered for men. She had buried, she had lied, she had cheated, she had stolen in the name of something she once thought _unconditional love_ —all to be discarded along a path that wasn’t even her own, one that would lead only to an empire of ashes. 

The realization that she had spent near-seventy years a pawn, sold her soul to be a fading martyr in the name of men and their ugly, selfish legacies had churned her insides sour. All at once, the meaninglessness of her existence closed in on her worse than any hangover, and it terrified her more than any devil, any vile spurt of blood ruining her silks, any barrel of a gun—metaphorical or literal—had.

“I will _not_ go along with your ungodliness,” she pulled the shaking fiend by his shirt collar, yanked him from his seat, game controller falling to the floor, battery dislodging and clattering off under the bed. “Your evil acts of filth and degradation got you into this mess. I _have_ God’s love. I have _everything_ I need.”  
  
She pointed her trembling index finger to his nose, raising her voice over his building tearful sobs, “ _You_ are the one that’s going to suffer. You and your _filthy negligence_. If you aren’t going to live the way we are meant to live,” she was leading him in all the vice-grip her paper-thin hands could muster, “trusting our father and obeying him, then you’ll be homeless out in the cold. I don’t answer to you, I answer to _the_ father, to my children, to family. You are _worthless_ , you are a _traitor_ , and you are _ungodly_.”

Julien was still stricken dumb and fixed to the wall, Michael’s whimpers and pleas unanswered, as Constance had all but dragged him towards the front door, pointing out towards the morning sun. 

“Now get the _fuck_ out of my house.” 

Michael had stomped across the road—bare feet, pajamas—and fled to the leaning manor which flung him into the world an unwilling monster. He had curled up by a laundry chute and cried and cried and cried, sick with confusion and sick with growing and sick with reeling contradictions. He didn’t understand, no matter how desperately he wanted to. It was in quivering, choking grief, wiping snot into the hem of his shirt, that his eye had fallen upon the gleam of his velveteen-red toenail varnish, chipping away with wear. 

__

Miss Julien and the saintly devotion of her forgiveness, her patience, her protection. His sobs then had a name, a liturgy to a girl of cicatrice and impenetrable patience, something he would never deserve in all his most despaired of apologies. He didn’t want to _forget_ or _pretend_ anymore. He sat in his own fetid self-loathing, knees to chin, rolling around the floor in pity and penance for hours, wholly aware of the fear that simmered in the shadows of the house from his very presence.  
A monster.  
Hated. 

He had dragged himself home on the leaden balls of his feet, a beaten dog, tail tween its legs, toward the only light he knew. There, he found her among the flowers, a small shape huddled in the creaking rhythm of a rocking chair at the foot of the porch. She had given off no aura or sensory thrum at all, cold and hollow like the dead, not completely unlike the spirits of his birthplace. 

That night in the rose-cemetery, he had knelt at her feet in worship, in confession, meriting the most cruel of punishments but receiving only her merciful fingers and a halo of soft kisses crowning him so gently that the tenderness of it was nearly intolerable. 

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> Unnecessary factoid: I just wrote this while waiting in the veterinarian’s office.


	8. Chapter 8

_“Many a gem sleeps buried in dark forgetfulness, far, far from picks and plumb-lines;_  
_Many a flower unwillingly looses its perfume, sweet as a secret, in deep solitudes.”_  
  
-Charles Baudelaire, ‘Bad Luck’  


######  __

____

  
  
The grand mirror leans precariously against the wall of the attic, the grooves of its gold filigree etching filled with dust. Michael stands straight on his haunches, flexes his tendons, stares right through the glass. He furrows his brow, narrowed eyes. Only he is impervious to the glittering emptiness that reflects off his gaze, and only he could look at his looming form in the mirror and see nothing but the dark fog of his failure and incompetence smoking over his skin like buzzards circling a carcass.

Michael has stopped growing. While accepting this development without question—and truthfully appreciative to not awaken paralyzed in the middle of the night to the agonizing stretch and snap of his bones any longer—there is a thick blanket of disappointment that has settled over the stagnancy of it. 

There is a thrumming that twists round his bones, weaved into his tissue and sinew, constantly winding him restless and unfulfilled. A barren void that he has no name or word for. With each passing day that he spends peeking out of the attic’s window in wait for his little caretaker he can feel the ground crumbling beneath him, the damned black hole hungry to swallow him up. He doesn’t yet understand it, but he can feel it ever-present over his shoulder, heavy and frightening. 

His attention flits to the dust and grime sparkling through splices of sunlight filtering through the window. She is not back yet, and he is growing anxious. What is he, if not a catastrophic instrument of immeasurable capability being locked inside of the attic by his mauled babysitter like a dangerous animal? A monster, most likely. He’s nearly sure of it. 

He can unlock the door, of course. It would take only the slightest twitch of a fingernail. But really, there isn’t any point in stepping a single foot out of that door anyways—the whole of the house refuses to show themselves to him no matter how much he has pleaded over the past six months. The theoretical chains that tether his feet to the attic floorboards are the most comfort he has had since his exile to Murderhouse. The psychological time-out was hardly an apt punishment. Tucked away up there, surrounded by the tall stacks of worn books he has since poured through and retained twice over, nest of fleece blankets and piles of pillows his designated prison, he knows that she will come back for him. She always does now, at least since after the first time. But what about today? The cicadas have began to chirp. His attention span is curdling. She’s usually back before the sun begins to fall. 

He flops down on the bed. If she leaves again for good this time he certainly deserves it, he knows. If she finally leaves for good he shouldn’t even be allowed the privilege to cry. A spider is spindling a web on the ceiling. He closes his eyes. The rhythmic tick of the sheet-draped grandfather clock does little to drown out the faint, far away steps of the spirits. Even with the fan spinning on high, he can feel all of them tip-toeing around him. Ben won’t even come around anymore, not since his last lapse of catastrophe. He’s reminded always of how unwanted he is, how disgusting. Nothing he does is right. 

The sound of a ball thumping down the steps rouses him once more. He huffs and the lock clicks. 

Julien’s sigh of relief is met with a small smile. Michael sits up and crosses his legs into a pretzel. Tufts of hair stick to his face. The heat of the attic assaults her senses, same as always, the pressure of it weighing heavy down upon her skin. 

“Sorry I’m running late. Arlington didn’t have the one you really wanted,” she unhooks the backpack from her shoulder, “I had to go all the way to Thunderbolt and swipe it. I barely made it out.” 

She unzips the pack and sits a new stack of books next to a bright orange extension cord, one of three coming in from under the door, mapping the floor with a variety of electric fans encircling the bed. 

A routine kiss is laid upon his forehead, the gesture unaware of itself, a necessity to his being. There is a gratitude in the way she leans in and grips the back of his neck, thankful that the anxieties and fears chewing holes through her belly remain unfulfilled. No fire and smoke. No fresh bodies littering the floor, human or animal. No (visible) crime scene for her to banish with bleach and dirt. A better day than she could have anticipated, twirling her sweater around her fingers nervously as she tried to keep a steady pace exiting the bookstore with $300 worth of research material stowed away on her shoulder. Envisioning all scenarios of disaster that would greet her at the front door once she reached the crumbling manor that she now begrudgingly calls home, hands shaking against the steering wheel as she drudged through traffic. 

She is wholly aware that this is the equivalent of trapping a snake under a laundry hamper. The only thing keeping him bound to that room was her promises and pleas. No—the only thing keeping him bound to that room was his own whim and will. As of now, he harbors no visible disgruntlement toward her, seemingly dissolved of the anger and hurt that made him rigid and cautious under her touch some odd months ago. She did leave him, after all. 

For six whole weeks, she was hellbent on fleeing like she always does, once again feeling thrown back out into the world where she was never welcome. She couldn’t stay at Constance’s house out of fear of law enforcement or worse prowling around, and she couldn’t stand the thought of being anywhere near the other god-forsaken house. It was only a matter of time before she was next, she decided. Before she was another pile of bones under a withering rose bush. 

Four nights after Constance’s disappearance, Julien had made up her mind. On the fifth night she was ready. Easing out of Michael’s sleeping embrace, she pecked his temple and gently closed the bedroom door behind her. A garbage bag of her few belongings were already lowered under her backseat. When she idled out of Constance’s driveway, the guilt nearly stopped her. Only nearly. 

It was naive of her to expect anything to go right. The humiliation and pain of being marked followed her wherever she went, the punishment for her own mistakes a permanent symbol for all to see and whisper about. The housekeeping jobs just didn’t scrape enough together, and she was having trouble finding anymore nanny work after she would meet with families. As usual, her face had repelled any chance of worthwhile employment. It was strange how everything seemed more difficult than ever, as though she were stamped with Michael’s seal, the scent of him keeping everyone who encountered her on edge. It was as if she were being pushed, quite forcefully, back to the house. Each step farther away was weighted and heavy. Every trip to a convenience store was a tribulation. The trunk of her SUV seemed to close in on her with every passing night she spent on its floor. Men with insidious intentions followed her as though she were a moving target, and she had grown so very tired. 

After a particularly irritating run-in with two creeps at a gas pump, Julien realized how much she needed to go back, pathetic as it was, if only because she had nothing else. She would be stalked by chaos regardless of whether she chose to stay with that boy. No one else would ever hold her up in the same regard, grip her hand like it helped anchor them both to the earth, stand in front of her when people gawked and stared or made remarks. There simply wasn’t any storyline where she would get the happy ending. No picket fence, no cushy nine to five, no til death to us part, no narrative that could take away all of the trauma she carried. Might as well be consumed by something that will always keep her warm. 

Pitiful sobs ripped through her chest that night, until the very resentment and loathing that lead her straight to this mess had drove her right back into the teeth of the snare. A rabbit seeking refuge from the storm in a box trap. 

When Julien had returned to the Langdon household, it was a quarter past three in the morning. The slam of her car door was unnerving, full of tension, cricketsong the only other stir in the silence. Apprehension wracked her nerve endings. She had gently tried the doorknob, it was unlocked. Was Constance still gone? Did she come back? The foreboding quiet evoked a dread she wasn’t prepared for, the fear of it indescribable. Six weeks. It was more than enough time for Michael to be gone. More than enough time for anything to happen. She could’ve been marching directly into a mausoleum, or just as easily her own death sentence.  
At least there wasn’t any smell of death from the hall. 

“Michael,” she had whispered into the empty dark lamely, more frightened than she would like to admit, “are you home?” 

After no answer there was a slow, terrified sweep through every room of the home and a survey of Michael’s vacant bedroom. His dresser was nearly emptied. The plush stuffed bear she had given to him, usually resting in the middle of his bed on the pillows, was nowhere to be found. The backyard was virtually untouched since she last occupied it over a month prior, no freshly stirred dirt or soil. There were no clues left behind at Constance’s, no sign of life or death. It reluctantly dawned on her that if he were anywhere, it would be in _that_ house.

Crossing the street on foot, the terror that had gripped her only minutes before her decision to enter Murderhouse seemed to dissipate, and it were as though she had been drawn into its leaning gates. There, in the cursed abode, she had found him, staring down upon her from the top of the stairs, chin up and mouth drawn down in indignance. He fixed down upon her with wounded rancor, a glimmer of tears threatening to fall.

“Michael,” she had breathed softly. His fists were balled, knuckles taught. 

“Why are you here?” His voice wavered— accusatory, loaded. His lip quivered. 

Her ascent up the staircase had been careful and measured. The house trembled, shook, chandeliers and trinkets rattled, a threat. Electricity hummed. Lights flickered. She hadn’t faltered, determined, each step an _I’m sorry_. When she reached his side and closed the gulf between them, her hold was tight and remorseful, hailing apologies into his scalp as he collapsed into her neck, heaving desperate sobs. 

Michael recounted everything that happened in her absence that early morning, head in her lap, rushed hysterics falling from his tongue between stifled whimpers. The sun had risen, birds chirping, as he lay despondent over her belly, his hair wound around her fingers. She could hardly stomach it all, the way everything had disintegrated in the wake of her abandonment. The way Michael had been all alone. 

Constance was dead. He had found her himself. While they awaited her return at home she had gone on a three-day spiral in the house of spirits, leaving Michael to discover her corpse sitting in a prim violet day dress on a sheet-draped sofa in the foyer, hands neatly at her sides. _She doesn’t want to see me_ he had wailed, _she hates me and it’s all my fault, everything is always my fault._ No incantation could comfort him, no affirmation would ever be enough to ease the rejection, she knew. _I lit them on fire, I lit them on fire, I lit them on fire,_ he slammed his forehead into her ribs with every repetition, _I sent them away forever and Ben won’t come back and dad thinks I’m disgusting and nobody will talk to me._

That morning she confided in him painful details of her own let-down childhood, at least the little she could remember of its splintered fragments. Of living out of her SUV. Of the great gaps in her psyche, holes in her conscious, a nausea that keeps her pinned to the earth. _You are not a monster_ she had recited into his ear, showering his temple in apologetic kisses, _you are not a monster._  
She didn’t know if this were true. 

It has now been almost five months since Julien’s return. The spirits won’t come out to speak to her either, most of them at least.

“It’s because they are afraid of you too,” said that intruding psychic with dated foil highlights, Billie Dean, between drags of a cigarette a few weeks ago, “I can’t quite place it myself, but you’ve got a haze around you, something that pushes back.” 

The only other living woman who made her presence known to that house had traced an acrylic nail around the stopper of a full liter Crown Royal bottle—an offering to Constance, “you know how vivid colorings in nature are considered a warning of poison?”

Julien had nodded, mug of tea cold in her hands. 

“Conspicuous coloration. You’ve got it releasing from your pores,” she leaned over the kitchen island to grip Julien’s hand warmly, “and it doesn’t have anything to do with the way you look, so don’t even bother fretting over that.” The cigarette she wielded in one hand dwindled to ash, she gave the girl’s fingers one last encouraging squeeze before disappearing into the bowels of the house, “aposematic. That is what you are. How you use it is your choice.” 

_Aposematic._

Michael now reads the word out loud from a book he has picked up off of the floor, pointing at it with his index finger, “aposematic organisms typically move in a languid fashion, as they have little need for agility and speed. Their morphology is tough and injury-resistant, allowing them to escape once the predator is warned off.” 

He looks up at her expectantly. 

“I’m not a poison dart frog,” she rolls her eyes, “but I see you’ve been learning a lot.” 

A leaning stack of books he has discarded for the day consists of thick and weathered volumes, ones he can pore over in minutes and recite aloud as though reading straight from the pages. Here, in this attic, he learns all about the world she is afraid to show him, afraid to let him participate in. He is bright and observant, eager to soak up every piece of information imaginable. From his naiveté blooms an insatiable curiosity, and under her watchful eye he does his very best to learn how to be better. 

Michael likes to read. He reads all kinds, fantastical and factual. He ruminates over the Byronic, romantic books that Julien says were a staple of her adolescence. Wonders how they made her feel. She says the pages were her escape from the Bible-thumping torment that oppressed her development, that although she knows gothic poetry is only dreamy costume and stylistic romanticism, it once gave her something to fall into when the lashings were too hard. She stowed them away and when her mother would find them, she would burn them. Michael tries to find the secrets within these volumes of magic and vampirism that makes them so frightening to people of holy word. It fascinates him, the way such divinity is snuffed out, driven to extinction with fire and chant. That beautiful things incite such fear.

More than anything, he wants her approval. His entire world hinges upon it. He has long since forgiven her for when she ran away, understanding that he doesn’t deserve a single ounce of her gentleness and care. He doesn’t need anybody else when she gives him everything he requires, teaches him so much. There is not a single thing he wouldn’t do to keep himself twined around her side, the determination to revolve around her axis obscures all else. And so, he listens. He sits in the dusty old attic whenever she asks, and he absorbs all of the lessons with focus and clarity. He recites all of the words and knows all of the technicalities of humanity, even if he cannot feel or comprehend the emotions himself. 

After idle conversation and recapping the day’s events, the graceless boy deftly untangling knots from her hair, they eat dinner downstairs and ready themselves for bed, Michael forever delighted by the way their toothbrushes overlap on the sink. He follows her to the door of her assigned bedroom, sent off with a _Goodnight, Michael._ It isn’t long before he returns, maybe an hour of her staring at the high ceiling and listening to the patter and creaks of the dead. He always tip-toes in as she lingers on the verge of sleep. He burrows himself into her side over the sheets, the heat he radiates always imposing. 

“Julien?” 

“Uh huh.”

“The world is an ugly place.” 

“I know it is.” 

“I wish it was just you and me.” 

She turns to face him in the dark, rests a hand over his temple, “right now, it is just you and me.” 

He shakes his head into the pillow, but decides the answer is satisfactory enough, opting to move his hand over hers and softly hold her knuckles against his mouth. When his breathing begins to slow, lulled rise and fall, she gently returns her hand to her side and reverts her attention back to the ceiling. 

More and more they discuss the things Michael senses inside of other people’s minds at length, how they are ugly and wrong. The visions of the late priest’s doings have scarred his retinas, often leaking into his nightmares. A single visit to the grocery store can give him an excruciating migraine. He especially hates men, finding that their minds are often the most sinister, a dark glint that can be seen in their eyes if you know to look for it. The ugly thoughts, he says, are the loudest, and they are impossible to shut out. He doesn’t like to hear them, they make him sick to his stomach. The repulsion of it makes him rigid, teeth clenched, ringing in his ears. He could watch them all alight with flame, he could send them to nothingness, laugh gleefully at the smoke and cinders. He would want nothing more, were it not for Julien’s disproval. 

She has never claimed sainthood. The bond between the two of them is hardly innocent, she is ashamed to admit. The blame could not be shifted entirely to his ability and persuasion, as a lot of responsibility lied in the simple fact that deep down she _liked_ it, found solace in it. His eagerness extends in plenty of ways, and her restraint has became laughably malleable. The very smell of him is sweet and sublime, something cunning and subduing. The sound of his labored breathing is enough to send her careening toward the edge. She would follow him into hellfire with the way he looks up when he kisses her kneecaps. How many times over the past couple of months have they laid in honeyed silence, sticky with west coast summer, with sweat, with the stain of each other? Hurt thing and hurt thing, both forced to grow far too soon, to compartmentalize themselves into cold, pragmatic machinery. Wrong or right, it just is. He is convincing and she is receptive, all reason long since discarded. 

Whether the frantic obsession is the result of some higher power or omniscient force she does not know, but frankly she does not care. At least the aimless void of her existence possessed now three purposes: protect Michael from the world, protect the world from Michael, protect Michael from himself. She had never predicted her life’s trajectory would eventually revolve around someone else’s, let alone under the jurisdiction of such an unholy union. Turning to his softly heaving shape, she lays one last peck on his forehead, reaching over to capture his burning warmth under her fingers before she finally drifts.

He is still asleep when she awakens in the morning, sprawled over the sheets clumsily, light snore on his breath. She wipes his golden hair from his damp forehead and descends the staircase, throwing the red bouncy ball wedged in the corner of a step off into the parlor for its owner. 

In the kitchen, the cawing from outside is shrill as siren. En route to stealthily swipe a morning paper from Constance’s lawn, she sleepily brings a few slices of bread out for the demands of her little friends, only to be taken aback by the multiplied amount of blue-black birds resting in wait for her, silenced by her presence. Crows line the windowsills, the front gate, the pillars. She goes back for the whole loaf and empties the bread over the lawn to their compliance. As they squawk in thanks she muses that maybe she shouldn’t have fed them so often, newspaper in hand, locking the door behind her with a yawn and returning inside once again to slip next to her infernal brat, incorrigible boy of spoil.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

>    
> Hi. ❤️  
> I will work on cleaning this silly little story up here and there, when time permits. This is a transitional chapter. I figure it’s only fair I finish this before season 9 airs. Love you all.
> 
> ETA: It has been brought to my attention that a widely beloved and talented fic writer has deleted all of their content and gone off the map. LANAWINTRS, if you by miraculous circumstance happen upon this, I hope you know that so many enjoyed your stories, and you were the number one recommendation I received from others. I’m actually regretful that I never got a chance to read your archive before it was gone. I hope you eventually grace us with your presence again, and know that you are missed. You are one hell of an individual.


	9. Chapter 9

_”2_  
_Like communion bread,_  
_your words dissolve in my mouth_  
_and never die._  
_3_  
_I don’t care under which sky —_  
_just sing your song till the end._  
_10_  
_Your look_  
_passes through me_  
_like lightning.”_

-Dunya Mikhail, ‘Tablets II’  


###### 

____

  
  


The band is loose on her ring finger, but it fits well on her middle. She lifts her hand and wiggles the digits, beholding the tarnished silver to catch dull light. 

“It looks like I’m a kept woman now,” she jokes, turning to face her gold-spun counterpart, his Grecian profile bathing in the pink of setting sun. 

Michael frowns. “What’s that?”

Her metallic laughter startles a mass of crows up from their sides, the flighted wings causing them both to flinch into their shoulders. The birds caw in annoyance, seating themselves a comfortable distance away from their nuisance. A worn tile slides off the roof and into the grass below. 

“Where’d you find this, anyway?” she rests her cheek in one palm, sifts through their pile of trinkets with the other. 

He lowers his gaze. “They gave it to me a couple of days ago. After you gave the good bread.” He cradles his knees to his chest. “They don’t like me at all, it was probably meant for you anyway.” He lays back on his elbows to stare up toward the sun, all wistful sigh and pouted mouth. 

Looking away, she purses her lips to fight back a grin. Sometimes they would nip at his arms and he would scowl, scattering the bread through the air, huffing. His exasperation could be lethal, but ever was it endearing when it wasn’t. This was the secret he kept hidden from her the last few nights, carefully removing the little ring from his pocket from time to time, hunched shoulders, regarding it as if sacred with his back to her. As if building up the courage to tentatively slip it over her finger, as he had now. 

“They don’t hate you, Michael. They probably nip at you to tease. They are fair creatures.” She runs her hand through the hair at the nape of his neck to ease his tight-lipped pout, “fairer than we could ever hope to be.” 

Michael and Julien overlook the backyard from atop the nooked terrace of their extemporary home, ankles crossed, lining up the trove of offerings from their black-feathered friends. Bolts. Soda can tabs. Buttons, a variety. Paper clips. Sun-bleached tube of Carmex. Dog tag, heart shaped. Seaglass. The pile grows by day, as does populace of birds lingering overhead, protectors of the mausoleum chateau. _Special, misunderstood creatures, crows are,_ she had said. 

“You don’t have to wear it if you don’t like it.” Michael is shy, hesitant. 

The girl rolls her eyes and places herself above his body, palms on each side of his hair, knees straddle, shadows over him, shrouds out the clouds.

“I’ll wear it forever if you if you christen it.” 

“Christen it?” Raised eyebrow, he’s lost. 

She hovers her hand over his lips with a playful smile, “yes. Kiss it. Then it’s from you.” 

Michael’s eyes gleam, hair splayed, reflecting warm marigold underneath the half-light of approaching dusk. He grabs her wrist and lowers her knuckles to his mouth, one soft peck, and then presses her fingers tight around his throat. The silver is cold against his jugular. Her hair tickles his temples. When she squeezes, his body goes rigid, spine lifting from the pavement, Cheshire-teeth shining with the charmed glint of satisfaction. The mouth of a predator. She grips his chin and shoves his face to the side, leaning down to nip the sweet spot between his jaw and earlobe, trail of forceful kisses, reveling in the smell of herbal shampoo and sweat. Her hands lead his gaze back up to her and a final kiss is placed between his brows. The sky is so giving tonight that it drowns everything in Michael’s favorite color: red. 

“It’s yours, I love it. I’ll never take it off.”

  


###### 

  


It rained heavily all day, the streets overrun with a film of water. Thunder roars, sheets of water drum against the roof. White flashes can be seen dancing around the blackness from the window panes.

The scars split her skin like cracks of lightning. It should be what it is: fibrous tissue and nothing more. But it isn’t—it’s the ultimate hindrance. A mark of permanence, a punishment, a preventative measure. It keeps her anchored to shadow; you can’t beguile your way through life with such a distinct neon sign over your head. You can’t get away with anything when the unpleasantness makes you so memorable. Tagged like cattle.

Michael doesn’t think she’s unpleasant. Here she is, splayed out before him, limbs pried apart, an offering. A reward. He’s been so very good. The sheen of her skin glows even in the dark. She’s soft and ripe and mean, and he likes it the most. She doesn’t reprimand his clumsy tongue or frantic incoordination, pulls fistfuls of his hair towards her when he uses his teeth.

 _Come here Michael._ It’s his favorite command.

Thunder rattles the house. Her breath catches with every desperate thrust of his hips. The way he snaps into her splinters through all of the dull, the static and the pain. The way he snaps into her makes her forgot what she is.

She falls asleep with sweat plastering hair at her temples, Michael’s soft snore a hum against her neck, his fingers clasped around her like she’s his favorite toy.

  


###### 

  


Wet liquid sheen of black latex. A boy that can crawl all over the walls. Paralysis and hands and hands and hands that slither across her skin. Ribbons of garter snakes twining round and up her legs. Slush of mud and grass. Splash of puddle underfoot, curdled scream cast out by thunder and fractures of white light. Forehead cracked into splintered hardwood.

She jolts awake facedown to the floor, mouth in vomit, foam on her lips, sputtering gristle. A deep splitting pain throbs through her skull. Julien’s belly is dangling towards the floor, legs twisting off the bed. A bed. What bed?

She uses her palms to slide to the ground, cheek streaking through her own spit up, barely able to lift her face from the floor, retching at the pungent smell and taste of it. Her left leg is numb as it smacks into the hardwood. _Michael?_ The name won’t leave her throat, she can only choke out the letter M softly into the pool of sickness smeared below her. Thump of footsteps grow louder. She doesn’t have the strength to crawl under the bed.

 _Michael?_ It won’t come out. _Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael. Michael. Michael. Michael. Michael?_ Nothing. Not a single cosmic twinkle from the ether. Flatline. Ringing in her ears. Empty.

“Muh. Mmn—? Mn what?”

Julien doesn’t recognize that voice. Soft, monotonous, low. The sound slices into her migraine. Hands brush her soiled hair from out of her face. Sunlight and shadow blurs through the haze of her returning vision. One pair of feet. Two pairs of feet. Three. Maybe more. Who knows, maybe she’s just seeing triple. She’s pulled up to sit against the bed, the nausea of being upright lurching back up to her throat, clenches her teeth. Damp cloth gently wipes vomit from her face.

“Maybe she’s trying to say Mallory.” Another voice. She doesn’t recognize it either.

“No she isn’t, dingbat. She doesn’t even know our names.” Voice three. Valley girl enunciation. A scoff from the doorway. Whispers. The spectacle has attracted a small crowd.

The girl gingerly wiping sick from her mouth smells like rosewater, wisps of mousy brown hair tickling against Julien’s lashes as she tends to the mess. She speaks and it cuts into her pounding headache again, “it doesn’t matter. Can somebody go get Zoey? And maybe a bucket.”

“Okay but it smells so gross in here. You know she’s going to make us scrub puke from between the floorboards with like, a toothbrush. Like chambermaids.” Julien tries to focus on the mass of shapes crowded to her left, leaning at the doorway. The girl above her shoos them off and they begin to file out and walk away. Receding footsteps. Her vision is slowly adjusting back into focus.

“Don’t mind them,” she lowers her voice to a mumble and wets the washcloth again, dabs at Julien’s chin, “they’re just squeamish is all.”

Buzzing behind her ears. What/who/how/why is this? Why can’t she reach into that place for him? There’s a thick cloud over her head. It’s a dream, it has to be. Everything is stark-white and bare, canopied in sunlight, silent. No screech of crow. No sheets of dust. If she isn’t asleep she is most certainly dead, because this isn’t a place she would ever find herself of her own accord, no chance in hell. _Where is he?_

Her memory can’t conjure what happened last, there’s a wall between her and everything leading up to this room. She resorts to flexing her fingers and toes, willing her blood to move through her body to gain the life back in her limbs so she can get the fuck out of there. Adrenaline begins to blot out the agony. The small woman mutters about this and that, she can’t focus long enough to catch it all, _—you still need time—, —Cordelia won’t be back until tomorrow—, —I promise everything will be okay—._ Julien’s eyes are darting round the room for an exit, an omen, a sign, anything really. She’s tucked back into the bed, propped up on a pile of pillows.

“I’m going to get you something to eat and then we can talk,” she lightly squeezes Julien’s fingers with a tiny smile, “you’ve been out almost two days.”

Mallory leaves the room and the warmth leaves with her. Julien’s hands clench the sheets in her fist, waiting until her light steps down the hall grow faint, flings herself off the mattress again. The blood hasn’t returned to her legs completely but she crawls through the discomfort, clawing at the floor, lifts herself to look out a window. Second floor. Lush green grass. More neat white paint. Pillars and iron-wroughting and carefully trimmed bushes. This isn’t Southern California anymore. She doesn’t recognize anything, she has no idea where she is, stumbles toward the full length mirror. A gasp at her reflection, hair matted in knots, dipped in dried blood, a silk white slip falling off her shoulders. Decorated in bruises, busted lip fat with swelling, purple cheekbone, left eye tight and tender.

 _Michael?_ Every time she reaches out to him in her head she’s met with nothing but the excruciating ring of her ears.

She limps her way to the stark-white door, down a stark-white hall, toward a split imperial staircase lined in stark-white. She peeks over the rail. More white pillars, gold urns. Cream-colored floor. She can hear voices—recitations—somewhere downstairs, although the manse is unusually still and quiet. A posh boarding school? Wrapping her arms around the railing, she begins her slow descent to freedom, praying for no one to approach, hobbling on her tip toes. She passes a dining room of idle chatter unnoticed, holding her breath, just yards away from a white door with an open room to its left, another staircase to its right. Pace quickens. The recitations are closer, but if she could only reach the door fast enough— 

Mallory yanks Julien back by hem of her slip and showers her in hushes, _you almost walked into Zoey’s class, come on, I’ll explain everything to you, you don’t want to be seen like this,_ pulling her back up the staircase and to the bleached prison she woke up in. Her vomit is gone. She sits on the bed, reaches out for Michael again. Nothing. 

“So who are you and why the fuck am I here?” 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> I’m fighting the urge to delete this out of annoyance with myself for not having the time to shape this to my own standard, but I’m doing my best to resist. It’s only supposed to be for fun right? I’m hoping I’ll get the chance to refine it before I go insane and nuke the whole thing. Thank you to all who have been encouraging and patient ❤️

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the lack of Michael in the first chapter, I’d like to put at least a little substance in the plot. He’ll be in the next one, patience! I debated back and forth in my head to try Y/N format but I just couldn’t do it. Julien is, however, still a conduit of sorts for the reader. I’ve never written a fic before and I’ve honestly only started reading them recently so please spare me. I’m easily embarrassed and unsure of myself but I suppose I’m using this as a prompt, my first exercise at writing.


End file.
